The 106th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met online on 29-30 June 2020. Based on the committee's recommendations to the ESO Director General, a total of 2688 (8-hour equivalent) nights of Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, VISTA, VST, the 3.6-metre, and NTT, and APEX telescopes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is 3 September 2020; see the separate announcement for further details.
With the release of the telescope schedule, the preparation of Service Mode (SM) observations (Phase 2) starts. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 106 observations is 3 September 2020.
ESO’s prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programme in both Garching (Germany) and Santiago (Chile) offers outstanding early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their independent research programmes. From exoplanets to cosmology, observational, theoretical and fundamental astrophysics, these are all areas where ESO Fellows can benefit from a highly dynamic scientific environment, at some of the most advanced ground-based telescopes in the world. Do watch ESOCast 165 to hear what current ESO fellows have to say about the fellowship programme.
Due to the evolving situation of the Covid-19 pandemic in Chile, all ESO observatories continue in a safe state with no science operations taking place. Visitor mode runs until September 10 have been cancelled. Users have been informed individually by ESO.
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 7-8 September 2020
ESO will organise the second edition of the La Silla Paranal Users Workshop as a series of online events, the first of which will take place in early September. If you are a La Silla Paranal Observatory user and are interested in the most up-to-date information, learning how to use the ESO Science Archive Facility, reducing ESO data or "face-to-face" contact with ESO experts working on various support services, this first instalment of the workshop is for you.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the lives of ALMA staff and users around the world. Although in some of the ALMA regions the situation is slowly improving, in other regions, including Chile, the evolution of the outbreak remains highly uncertain. Because of the on-going situation in Chile, ALMA operations unfortunately remain suspended. ALMA staff continue to monitor the situation very carefully and work on the development of detailed plans for the return to operations, which will be initiated when the situation allows. ALMA will keep updating the user community on the developments.
The APEX website has been renewed and improved in various areas. Some of the most remarkable updates are related to information about the recently upgraded telescope and new instrumentation available and the procedures to follow in order to apply for telescope time in the different queues. Also several tools, at the service of researchers who want to user APEX for their research, have been improved. Among these are the observing time estimators, the atmospheric tool calculator and the instrument setup tool.
Ground-based astronomical observations in the thermal infrared wavelength regime (3-30 microns) provide a powerful tool to discover and characterise the most obscured and cool sources in the Universe. This workshop aims to bring together the experts in the field to review the science highlights from various thermal infrared instruments, from protoplanetary discs to active galactic nuclei. Some future facilities will be reviewed, and techniques and approaches for observations and calibrations will be compared, with the aim to reach the theoretical limit, the background-limited performance. This conference was originally planed for earlier this year and had to be postponed due to the Covid crisis. It will now be held online on 12-16 October. Participation is free of charge and all sessions will be recorded. Please see the conference webpage for more information.
The exceptional global conditions due to the Covid-19 pandemic have deeply affected science operations at ESO observatories, causing an unprecedented backlog of observations for high-priority programmes, including Large Programmes. ESO is studying a variety of measures to complete those programmes at the earliest possible time once operations are resumed, which may require the exceptional suspension of the Call for Proposals for Period 107 (April-October 2021). While the decision is not firm yet, researchers preparing or planning to submit proposals for Period 107 should take into account that such suspension is a real possibility.
Version 6 of the ESO Science Data Products standard is now published. It is a complete revision and restructuring of the previously published version available on the ESO Phase 3 web site. It now integrates the information published as separate addenda and in the Phase 3 frequently asked questions also. A major effort has been devoted to improve the readability and clarity of the text. Errors and typos have been corrected. The new version of the standard can be downloaded as a PDF document.
This data release provides 3D data cubes obtained from KMOS, the K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph. The instrument is located at the VLT UT1 telescope and has 24 image slicer Integral Field Units (IFUs) that can be placed independently in the patrol field of 7.2 arcmin diameter. Each IFU has 14 slices with 14 spatial pixels along each slice and a field-of-view of 2.8x2.8 arcsec2 which gives a spatial resolution of 0.2 arcsec. Spectral resolving power depends on the grating and is between 2000 and 4200. This initial release consists of observations from October 2013 (i.e. start of operations) until February 2020.
The Offices for Science and the Astronomy Faculty are very pleased to present the 2020 ESO Fellows. Here is an introduction to the Fellows due to start in Chile later this year.
The Offices for Science and the Astronomy Faculty are very pleased to present the 2020 ESO Fellows. Here is an introduction to the Fellows due to start in Garching, Germany later this year.
The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground based exoplanet survey designed to detect Neptune and super-Earth sized planets orbiting around bright stars, using the transit method. The NGTS facility consists of 12 fully-robotic 20 cm f/2.8 telescopes located at the ESO site on Paranal, Chile. Each telescope has a 2.8x2.8 deg2 field of view and is equipped with a custom filter with a bandpass of 520-890nm, which increases sensitivity to late-K and early-M stars.
This data release (DR5.1) is based on the observations acquired between February 2010 and October 2016 of 42 VMC survey tiles encompassing the whole Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the Magellanic Bridge and the Magellanic Stream components of the survey. The total sky coverage is 40, 20, and 3 deg2 in the SMC, the Bridge, and the Stream, respectively. This release adds reduced and calibrated deep products (co-added tile images and related single band catalogues), together with a multi-band (YJKs) aperture matched, epoch merged source catalogue for more than 14.6 million sources, three multi epoch single band catalogues, a catalogue of variable sources (39406 records) and a PSF photometry catalogue. The total volume of this data release is about 166 Gb.
ESO is organising the La Silla Paranal Users Workshop, a series of 3-hours online events, the first of which will take place in early September. If you are a La Silla Paranal Observatory user and are interested in the most up-to-date information, learning how to use the ESO Science Archive Facility, reducing ESO data or "face-to-face" contact with ESO experts working on various support services, this first instalment of the workshop is for you.
This workshop aims to bring together the experts in the field to review the science highlights from ESO's thermal IR instruments TIMMI, TIMMI2, VISIR, MIDI and MATISSE as well as those at other observatories, such as COMICS, Michelle and T-ReCS. Some future facilities will be reviewed, and techniques and approaches for observations and calibrations will be compared, with the aim to reach the theoretical limit, the background-limited performance.
This virtual workshop intends to celebrate 20 years of great UVES science and envision the future role of the instrument. Ten prominent scientists will resume the history of UVES, outline the scientific highlights of its long career and offer their insights on how to best equip it to help tackle the scientific questions of the next decade. A final discussion session will address the possible future instrumental upgrades, to balance technical constraints with scientific needs, and help to define a set of compelling science cases.
This ESO/NRAO workshop aims to discuss the emerging new paradigm of planet formation. The program will offer a broad view of the field, covering from the early stages of disks still embedded in their parental envelope to the times when full planetary systems are formed and only a few remnants of the progenitor disk are left. It will also explore the future of planet formation studies, as well as the impact and potential of upcoming instrumentation and telescopes (e.g. ngVLA. E-ELT, SKA, JWST). With this workshop, we aim at creating a more unified view of the exciting discoveries that have taken place in recent years.
The Network for Young Researchers in Instrumentation for Astrophysics (NYRIA) is organising its 4th annual workshop from 26th - 30th October 2020. The workshop is aimed for early career researchers, i.e. final year Bachelor students, Masters students, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, working in ground based, visible and infrared instrumentation for astronomy.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together the community of observers and theoreticians working on single and binary evolved stars. The workshop will concentrate on the effects of binaries on AGB stellar evolution. At this mass range, such effects are known but have so far often been neglected. However, contributions on this science scheme related to other evolved stars, such as red supergiants, will be considered as well.
Pitch your research for an ESO Press Release for a chance to make the news.
ESO produces press releases based on research done with ESO telescopes or instruments, including those where ESO is a partner or that are hosted at an ESO site. At the Department of Communication, we are always searching for exciting and important research to feature in ESO press releases. If you have an interesting story of your own that you think could fit the criteria for an ESO press release, please send your paper to ESO's Public Information Officer Barbara Ferreira via e-mail at pio@eso.org.
Share your photos from ESO sites!
If you are visiting ESO sites and you like to capture your experience on camera, the Department of Communication invites you to share your photos with the world. If you are interested please submit your pictures for evaluation by e-mail.
