European
Southern
Observatory
ESO Science Newsletter June 2024
07 Jun 2024

This newsletter is a summary of recent ESO Science Announcement items. Follow the links or visit ESO Science Announcements to read more.



Science Announcements


Call for Letters of Intent for Public Surveys with KMOS

04 Jun 2024:

Following a recommendation by the ESO Scientific and Technical Committee (STC), ESO is issuing a call for letters of intent for public surveys with KMOS. A public survey is understood to be an observing programme in which the investigators commit to produce and make publicly available, within a defined time, a fully reduced and scientifically usable data set that is likely to answer a major scientific question and be of general use and of broad interest to the astronomical community. The raw data are public immediately. These surveys are envisaged to be observing programmes with up to 200 observing nights to be allocated over six semesters with KMOS.

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Upcoming Changes in the Observing Proposal Submission: Yearly Cycle and Fast Track Channel

04 Jun 2024:

The Call for Proposals for the La Silla Paranal Observatory will move to a yearly cycle in 2025. To address the increased duty cycle resulting from this change, a Fast Track Channel with staggered deadlines throughout the year will be introduced simultaneously. The criteria and frequency for the Fast Track Channel are under discussion with the ESO advisory committees (Scientific and Technical Committee and Users Committee). The community will be informed regularly about the implementation of the yearly call and the Fast Track Channel through news in the upcoming Call for Proposals for Period 115, newsletter posts and direct emails to active Principal Investigators. The change follows recommendations made in a report by the Time Allocation Working Group almost a decade ago.

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Second Announcement: "Hey GPT! Can you help me understand the Universe?", Online, 23-27 September 2024

31 May 2024:

This is the second announcement of the conference “Hey GPT! Can you help me understand the Universe? A synoptic view of the impact of chatGPT-like technologies on the future of astronomy”. The list of invited speakers, including the title of their talks, can be found at the workshop webpage.

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Registration Open: "A Decade of Discoveries with MUSE and Beyond", Garching bei München, 18-22 November 2024

31 May 2024:

Going well beyond the 10th anniversary of MUSE, this workshop is a very timely opportunity to reflect on the many successes and challenges such an instrument triggered and to further shape a community-wide science perspective and effort, supported by integral-field spectroscopy. Please note that the registration and abstract submission for the ESO workshop "A decade of discoveries with MUSE and beyond" are now open.

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"Galaxies at Crossroads: Outflows and IMF in the VLT/ELT/ALMA/JWST Era", Brno, Czech Republic, 16-20 September 2024

31 May 2024:

ESO is excited to announce that registration and abstract submission for the ESO conference "Galaxies at Crossroads: Outflows and IMF in the VLT/ELT/ALMA/JWST Era" (GALCROSS) are now open. The conference will be held in Brno, Czech Republic, from 16-20 September 2024. The conference will explore the dynamic processes shaping galaxies, particularly gas outflows, and critically examine important factors like the Initial Mass Function (IMF), ultimately analyzing their reciprocal influence on the chemical enrichment of both stellar and gas components. This event is a unique opportunity to merge theoretical insights and observational breakthroughs, sparked by the latest data from cutting-edge astronomical instruments. The focus is on dissecting the complex interplay between galactic outflows/inflows, the Initial Mass Function (IMF), and the intricate mass-metallicity relationship, all of which are key to understanding the cosmic tapestry of galaxy formation and evolution.

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The Messenger 192 is Now Available

29 Apr 2024:

The latest edition of ESO's science and technology journal, The Messenger, is now available online.

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Data Release of the MUSE gAlaxy Groups In COSMOS (MAGIC) Survey Datacubes

29 Apr 2024:

The release of the MUSE gAlaxy Groups In COSMOS (MAGIC) survey (Programmes 094.A-0247, 095.A-0118, 096.A-0596, 097.A-0254, 098.A-0017, 099.A-0246, 0100.A-0607, 0101.A-0282, 0102.A-0327, 0103.A-0563, PI T. Contini) is composed of 18 datacubes, observed with exposure times from 1 to 10 hours, with a median of 4.3 hours, using the wide-field mode, with a spectral sampling of 1.25 Angstroms and a spatial sampling of 0.2 arcsecond. The datacubes cover the wavelength range between 4700 and 9350 Angstroms and have an image quality better than 0.7" FWHM owing to good observing conditions and/or to the use of adaptive optics. The median 3-sigma point-source flux limit of an unresolved emission line reaches 3.6x10-19 erg s-1 cm-2 and the median point source magnitude limit is about 28.5 at 5-sigma in white-light images. The MAGIC survey datacubes target 15 known massive groups and clusters at intermediate redshift (0.3 < z < 0.8), 14 of which being located in the COSMOS field and one in the VVDS field. This dataset is incredibly rich and contains more than one thousand of objects, from stars to high redshift galaxies, as well as extended nebulae.

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First ERIS Imaging and IFU Data Become Public

18 Apr 2024:

The  Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) is a general-use infrared integral field spectrograph and imager that utilises the adaptive optics on the VLT’s UT4. After one year of operation, the proprietary period for the first observations has expired. Both raw and fully processed science data are now publicly available for download via the ESO Archive. The processed data are organised into two data collections, ERIS-NIX and ERIS-SPIFFIER, which contain reduced scientific imaging products and 3D data cubes, respectively. 

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Upcoming ESO or ESO-related workshops

Planet-forming disks can nowadays be probed with unprecedented detail thanks to facilities, such as ALMA at sub-millimeter wavelengths or high-contrast imaging instruments in the near-infrared such as the VLT/SPHERE instrument. In the past decade these facilities have transformed the field of planet formation enabling both moderate resolution statistical disk surveys and high resolution imaging studies of disks.

Today the field is driven by observations, and it seems to be continuing along this path with JWST upcoming results and the many recently accepted Large Programs in the field of planet-formation that are ongoing at different facilities. Theory and models are faced with the task of explaining much more complex scenarios of disk evolution, planet formation, planet-disk interaction. 

This workshop aims to bring together observers with expertise in different wavelength regimes, theorists, and modellers, to review the state of the art, pin-point the main open questions, and explore new venues.

 

GRAVITY has transformed optical interferometry thanks to its unprecedented sensitivity. GRAVITY+ will yet improve VLTI sensitivity by being able to observe targets as faint as K<22 mag. This will allow significant breakthroughs across astrophysical domains as different as AGNs, young stellar objects and exoplanets. Thanks to the sensitivity boost provided by GRAVITY+ this is the time to open VLTI to explore new fundamental physics by installing a new high-resolution grism for GRAVITY+. This workshop is aimed at the wider spectroscopic, and spectro-interferometric community to gather new ideas about how to maximise the scientific exploration of the new GRAVITY high resolution capabilities, and engage with the spectroscopic community with or without interferometric experience.

 

Understanding the processes that govern the evolution of galaxies is a pressing issue in astrophysics. The observed tension between the galaxy's stellar mass function and the Dark Matter (DM) halo mass function in the LCDM framework has led researchers to explore various mechanisms to reconcile theory with observations. Two pivotal phenomena regulating star-formation efficiency and metallicity are the galactic outflows driven by star formation (SF) feedback and/or active galactic nuclei (AGN) and a variable integrated stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF). It is clear that these physical processes significantly influence the mass build-up in a galaxy during its star formation history, subsequently affecting chemical enrichment, overall gas phase, and stellar metallicity. However, the intricacies of their interplay and the individual role of each process remain not fully understood. This workshop aspires to address this complex issue. Capitalizing on the opportune timing, it is planned to use the fresh insights provided by the newly-arrived data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and VLT/ERIS. Looking ahead, the worshop is also gearing up to harness the potential of forthcoming resources such as VLT/MOONS, VISTA/4MOST, and ELT.

 

The technology around Artificial Intelligence (AI) has nowadays achieved remarkable performances in terms of speed, response quality, affordability to the public and reliability. The use of AI technologies will soon (if not already!) play a significant role in the way scientists, and astronomers in particular, process data, write and evaluate applications of all sorts (research grants, observing proposals, job applications), or more generally, the way research is done in astronomy. Beyond the impact on the way science is done, AI might have a non-negligible sociological impact, overtaking some of the tasks currently requiring human intervention, hence removing or mitigating the need of a variety of skills (e.g., programming, peer-review and evaluations, administrative tasks).

 

The Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, MUSE, mounted on the VLT-UT4, has allowed the community to go one significant step beyond. With its large field of view, broad wavelength coverage, state-of-the-art adaptive optics, and spectro-photometric capabilities, MUSE quickly became a reference instrument addressing a rich and wide range of scientific questions. Combined with the powerful adaptive optics facility, MUSE has profoundly changed the way observers think and prepare their observing programs. It has opened new avenues into a variety of science topics covering e.g., galaxy formation and evolution, the nature of the circum-galactic medium, early stellar evolution or stellar populations. This MUSE-10yrs workshop will provide the perfect opportunity to discuss past achievements, to probe synergies between integral-field spectroscopy and other existing or upcoming facilities, and most importantly to address the current and expected next challenges and to nurture potential ideas for the future.

 

The aim of this workshop is to unite researchers across diverse fields to exchange fresh insights into the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and its impact on shaping the evolution of galaxies. Specifically, we aim to explore and elucidate the interplay between the different diffuse media (circum and intergalactic media) and the stellar and interstellar components of galaxies throughout cosmic history. Additionally, we intend to delve into existing observational and computational constraints, while outlining the most promising methodologies for studying diffuse media, particularly in light of the forthcoming ELTs and new instrumentation.

 

Gas flowing into, out of, and around galaxies plays a key role in shaping how their properties evolve over cosmic time. The mechanisms driving these behaviors are poorly understood, largely because we lack detailed knowledge of fundamental gas properties across multiple scales and phases. Tackling these issues necessarily requires a multi-wavelength approach. Fortunately, the southern hemisphere hosts the most comprehensive suite of observational facilities available for tackling this topic, in the form of the ESO, ALMA, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) precursors (MWA, ASKAP and MeerKAT), and very soon, the SKA-Mid and SKA-Low telescopes.

This conference is supported and sponsored by both ESO and the SKA as it supports the joint science of both facilities that will be dominant in astronomy in the coming decade. It brings together astronomers from optical/IR, FIR/submm, radio, and theory domains, with the common interest of understanding the evolving role of gas in galaxies over cosmic time using ESO and SKA facilities.