The Users Committee (UC) represents ESO's astronomical community at large and acts as an advisory body to the ESO Director General on matters related to the performance, scientific access, operation and data management facilities to the La Silla Paranal Observatory and ALMA. The annual meeting of the UC is scheduled on 28 and 29 April 2025. During the UC meeting updates from ESO and feedback from the user community are exchanged and openly discussed. Each year one topic is explored in more detail and this year the Special Topic session is dedicated to Quality Assurance and Data Quality.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 116 (1 October 2025 - 30 April 2026) has been released. Please consult the Period 116 document before applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities can be found on the ESO webpages linked from the Call for Proposals. The proposal submission deadline is on 20 March 2025, 12:00 CEST.

ESO is pleased to announce the first ESO Science Writing School, which will take place on 4-8 August 2025, at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany.  

Are you a PhD student eager to dive into the cutting-edge scientific world at one of the most prestigious observatories on the planet? The ESO research studentship programme offers you a chance to do just that. This exceptional programme is open to students enrolled in a PhD programme in astronomy or related fields. You will continue your doctoral research under the formal supervision of your home university, but with the added benefit of spending a minimum of six months (Chile) or one year (Germany), and up to two years at ESO, working closely with a dedicated ESO staff astronomer.

The User Support Department again extends its sincere thanks to all those Principal Investigators and their Phase 2 delegates who participated in the 2024 online Paranal Service Mode User Satisfaction Survey. A total of 144 responses were received from the targeted campaign. As in the past, where possible, respondents who provided detailed comments have been contacted via e-mail. A summary report based on this latest User Satisfaction Survey is now available.

Thanks to a highly successful suite of instruments, the demand on usage of one of VLT Unit Telescope (UT4) has remained high in recent years. ESO has taken several actions to alleviate the situation, including the second generation deformable secondary mirror Phase A study. In parallel, a careful monitoring of operations at the telescope indicates that a large fraction of the telescope time observing with MUSE is spent with MUSE Wide Field Mode without Adaptive Optics, (NOAO). While the NOAO mode is essential for programmes gathering information over the 582-597 nm wavelength which is otherwise blocked by the Na Notch filter, the benefits of AO are many-fold. Not only the operations at the telescope are routine, but importantly seeing is improved in any observing conditions (bad seeing, light cirrus, high wind speed) while proven to be more stable during long exposure times.

The third data release (DR3) of the ESSENCE project contains all VLT/FORS1 spectra taken over the period 2002-2006. It contains and expands on the previous data release (DR2, from 2014), which contained 54 spectra of 50 individual objects. The present release contains 184 spectra of 168 individual objects, of which 79 high-redshift Type Ia supernovae that were the main target of this project. More information about the programme can be found in the accompanying documentation.

The ExoplaNeT accRetion mOnitoring sPectroscopic surveY (ENTROPY) aims at investigating into the until now poorly understood process of accretion among planetary mass companions. The detection of emission lines from accreting gas giants facilitates detailed investigations into this process. The data released via this collection are the high-resolution (R ∼ 50000), stacked, flux-calibrated 1D spectra obtained with the Echelle spectrograph UVES (3200–6800 Å) of the few known young, planetary-mass objects with observed emission.

ESO is pleased to announce the public release of the VVV Infrared Astrometric Catalogues (VIRAC) Version 2. The catalogues are based on data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) Survey and its extension, VVVX, and offer unprecedented precision in astrometric and depth.

Dear colleagues,

From several viewpoints, 2024 was a year when ESO started to move towards new future avenues, while running very strong on its current commitments.