Further, our readers will find a description of the planned upgrade of the VLTI and the GRAVITY instrument to become GRAVITY+, which will enable our community to measure black hole masses across cosmic time in hundreds of active galactic nuclei, use the faint stars in the Galactic centre to probe General Relativity, and enable the characterisation of dozens of young exoplanets to study their formation. The ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope Working Groups tasks and achievements are summarised in another article.

The Astronomical news section features articles on what is ESO’s role in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and reports on various workshops held in 2022. A highlight among these is the report on the EAS Symposium "ESO@60: A stairway to the Universe”, dedicated to the technological and scientific achievements of the organisation 60 years since its foundation.

As usual, the issue features the profiles of ESO science and engineering fellows, describing what sparked their interest in astronomy and their respective paths to ESO.

Finally, we bring to the attention of our readers that as of 2023 The Messenger will become an online-only publication. We invite everyone who wishes to receive the new issues directly into their email inbox to subscribe using the link provided on The Messenger webpage. We also take this opportunity to inform our readers that, owing to resource limitations, there will be only two issues published in 2023, in the Northern spring and autumn.