Phase 3 denotes the process of preparation, validation and ingestion of science data products (SDPs) in the ESO science archive facility, and subsequent data publication to the scientific community. SDPs are data products with instrument and atmospheric signatures removed, calibrated in physical units, with noise properties (like limiting magnitude or signal-to-noise ratio) quantified and documented. Version 8 of the ESO Science Data Products standard is now published.

VIDEO (under programme ID 179.A-2006, PI: Jarvis) is a deep near-infrared survey which targets ~12 square degrees over the ELAIS-S1, XMM-LSS, and E-CDFS extragalactic fields. VIDEO belongs to the suite of the first cycle Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) public surveys conducted at ESO and now completed.

The annual public release of ESO VLT/VLTI instruments data reduction software packages is scheduled for end of May 2022. Please note that the new pipeline packages will be released for the following operating systems: Fedora 33, 34, 35; Scientific Linux 7; CentOS 7; macOS 10.15, 11 and 12

The ALMA Director, on behalf of the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and the partner organisations in East Asia, Europe, and North America, is pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 9 Call for Proposals (CfP) for scientific observations to be scheduled from October 2022 to September 2023. Proposal submission opened at 24 March 2022, 15:00 UT and the submission deadline is 21 April 2022, 15:00 UT. More information can be found on the ALMA Science Portal.

The deadline for proposal submission for Period 110 (1 October 2022 - 31 March 2023) was 25 March, 2022. 871 valid proposals were submitted, including 33 Large Programmes. On the VLT the most requested ESO instrument was MUSE with a request of 449 nights, followed by X-Shooter with 258 nights. HARPS on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope was the most demanded instrument at La Silla (and fourth most demanded instrument overall), with 184 nights.

Following an incremental ramp-up plan, La Silla Paranal Observatory has been supporting science operations for all telescopes and systems over the past months. As of March 29, the Observatory moves one more step ahead, to the ‘Full Operations’ mode. This step lifts several of the limitations that have been present since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, while still maintaining a basic set of sanitary restrictions on site. For science users the most important change is that as of June 2022 the observatory will again welcome visiting astronomers on site.

The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. In this Issue 186 readers will find an article about the ongoing search for quiescent black holes, which has detected stripped stars instead. The issue continues with an overview of the ALMACAL project, describing this survey based on ALMA calibrator observations. Further, readers will be able to learn more about the processes that drive the evolution of isolated magnetic white dwarfs.

The next Science Operations workshop, SciOps 2022, is dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for science and operations in Astronomy and will take place in hybrid format on 16-20 May 2022 at the ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München and online. Building on the success of the previous series of similar events, this ESO/ESA workshop aims to facilitate the exchange of current developments and applications of AI-enabled technologies in science operations for space- and ground-based astronomical facilities.

On January 31 2022 the ESO Director General signed the agreement for the design and construction of the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES), a very efficient, intermediate resolution spectrograph, that covers the UV region close to the atmospheric cutoff. The agreement was signed with Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), representing the consortium including INAF (Italy), the Science and Technology Facilities Council - UK Astronomy Technology Centre and Durham University (United Kingdom), Landessternwarte Heideberg (Germany), Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomy Center (Poland) and Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas-Universidade de São Paulo and Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (Brazil).

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 user interfaces to the La Silla Paranal Observatory and ALMA. The annual meeting of the UC is scheduled on 28 and 29 April 2022. 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 future of Visitor Mode and remote participation in observations. The UC welcomes input, opinions and suggestions from the community either through direct contact with the UC members or through the Poll designed by the UC.