The Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (PESSTO) is one of the two on-going ESO public spectroscopic surveys. PESSTO aims to deliver high-quality, time series optical and near-infrared spectroscopy of optical transients covering a broad range of luminosity, host metallicity and explosion mechanisms. A summary of PESSTO is available (PDF). Data products resulting from the first release of PESSTO are now available via the Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

VIDEO is a deep near-infrared survey targeting ~12 square degrees over the ELAIS-S1, XMM-LSS and ECDFS extragalactic fields. VIDEO belongs to the suite of six public surveys being conducted with VISTA. The first public data release (DR1) of the VIDEO programme via the ESO Science Archive Facility, contained 97 individual (i.e. single-OB) tile images in the VIDEO-XMM3 field and their associated single-band source lists. This release (VIDEO-XMM DR2) adds 156 single-OB images in the VIDEO-XMM fields 1, 2 and 3.

The online interface to the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) LABOCA and SABOCA calibration data has been significantly updated. The query pages for zenith opacities and calibration factors are affected. The calibration dataset has been fully re-reduced for both bolometer cameras, leading to improvements and using more precise algorithms to better estimate the sky opacity values. Extensive help pages have been added, including descriptions on how to use these data in BoA.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 14–18 July 2014

Galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) are not randomly distributed in the Universe. The distribution of AGN, measured by clustering, enables new insights into the physical conditions that govern the accretion onto supermassive black holes and high precision AGN clustering can provide constraints on cosmological parameters. AGN clustering measurements have gained significant interest in the last decade and upcoming large surveys will generate AGN samples with several million objects. These surveys offer the unique opportunity to study AGN and galaxy co-evolution, AGN physics, and cosmology with AGN clustering measurements.

The December 2013 issue of The Messenger contains a section with summaries of ten of the eleven ESO public surveys, together with an introductory overview on the progress of the public surveys. The whole issue, or individual articles, can be downloaded.

The VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy Survey (VIKING), one of the 6 VISTA public surveys, is a wide area (eventually ~1500 square degrees), intermediate-depth (5-sigma detection limit J~21 [Vega]) near-infrared imaging survey, in the 5 broadband filters Z, Y, J, H, Ks. The first VIKING data release, which is based on observations until mid-February 2011, covers 226 square degrees in all 5 filters and consists of 14.7 million sources (including low-reliability single-band detections).

The collection of pipeline-processed high-resolution spectral data obtained with UVES has been significantly extended, now also including the observations that make use of the image slicers. In addition to the previously announced UVES data release, over 10 000 individual spectra, acquired 2003 - 2013, are now available from the Science Archive Facility.

Version 2.5 of the ESO data reduction environment Reflex has been released. Reflex provides an easy interface to run and supervise VLT data reduction pipelines. Reflex can be installed with a self-explanatory installation script and the workflows are pre-configured to run right out of the box on demo or user data. All Reflex workflows come with a detailed step-by-step tutorials, and a detailed discussion of the design principles has been presented by Freudling et al, 2013, AA 559, 96.

The 81st Scientific Technical Committee (STC) meeting was held on 22–23 October 2013. The STC meets twice a year, is composed of representatives from the ESO member states and is the primary interface between the scientific community and the telescope and instrumentation projects. The STC also has sub-committees for the La Silla Paranal Observatory (LSP), ALMA and APEX (European Science Advisory Committee, ESAC) and for E-ELT (ESC). The ESC was constituted by ESO Council in June and met for the first time this October.

The proposal submission deadline for ALMA Early Science Cycle 2 proposals closed on the 5 December 2013. A total of 1382 proposals were received, requesting 7314 hours of 12-metre array time and 3325 hours of Morita Array (ALMA Compact Array, ACA) time. ToO observations were requested in 24 proposals. A total of 1049 individual PIs and 3408 proposers (PIs and CoIs) were involved in the submitted proposals.