The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. Issue 182 is a special one dedicated to the instrumentation programme for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). It features articles detailing the status of the ELT instrumentation programme, as well as presentations of each instrument individually. This issue also contains science results based on SINFONI and MUSE, as well as profiles from two ESO fellows describing what sparked their interest in astronomy and their respective paths to ESO. The issue closes with a tribute to Nichi D’Amico, ESO Council representative for Italy, who passed away in September 2020.

Period 108 marks the full deployment of the Dual-Anonymous Peer Review (DAPR) in the evaluation of proposals for observations at ESO telescopes. Applicants must formulate the scientific rationales of their proposals following the anonymisation rules and examples described in this link, which also gives a detailed description of the DAPR paradigm. While Period 106 was used as a dry run, both to make the community aware of the upcoming implementation of DAPR and to test its practical, procedural and policy aspects, from Period 108 proposal anonymisation is mandatory. Failure to abide by the DAPR rules may lead to disqualification of the proposal.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 108 (1 October 2021 – 31 March 2022) has been released. Please consult the Period 108 document for the main news items and policies related to applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities is contained on ESO webpages that are linked from the Call. The proposal submission deadline is 12:00 CET 25 March 2021.

ESO is organising the second part of the 2020/2021 La Silla Paranal Users Workshop. This year, the workshop consists of a series of online events, the first of which took place in early September. On March 3rd, just after the publication of the Call for Proposal for P108, ESO will (virtually) host the second part of the workshop, focussed on the proposal preparation and submission process.

The fourth and final data release of the deep VIMOS survey of the CANDELS UDS and CDFS fields, VANDELS, is now available in the ESO Science Archive Facility. The VANDELS survey (Programme id 194.A-2003, PI L. Pentericci and R. McLure) started data acquisition in November 2014 and was completed in March 2018 before the VIMOS decommissioning. It delivers high signal-to-noise (range: 10 -100), medium resolution (R~600) optical spectra (4800-10000 Å) for galaxies in the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) and Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) survey fields. The total area covered is 0.2 degree².

VEGAS is a deep multi-band (u'g'r'i') imaging survey of bright (M_B<-21mag) early-type galaxies in the local volume within 54 Mpc/h carried out with OmegaCam on the VLT Survey Telescope (VST; see also the VEGAS website). Observations are based on the VST Guaranteed Time Observation assigned to the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics under programme ID runs: 089.B-0607(A), 090.B-0414(B,D), 091.B-0614(A), 092.B-0623(B,C,D), 094.B-0496(D), 095.B-0779(A), 096.B-0582(B), 097.B-0806(A,B), 098.B-0208(A), 099.B-0560(A), and 0100.B-0168(A).

As previously announced, ESO is implementing a Special Call (hereafter SC107) for the submission of projects consisting of novel and urgent observations that could be executed during P107 (April 1 – September 30, 2021). SC107 will be open only to proposals concerning a highly compelling and competitive scientific topic, requiring urgent observations; proposals of a risky nature, requiring a small amount of observing time to test the feasibility of a programme; and proposals asking for follow-up observations of a programme recently conducted from ground-based and/or space telescope facilities, where rapid implementation holds the promise of breakthrough results. Only up to 15% of the time dedicated to science observations will be available through SC107. It is therefore expected that only exceptional, highly rated science cases may be allocated telescope time. Resubmissions of previously rejected proposals will not be considered.

Olivier Chesneau, one of the most active and prolific members of the optical interferometry community, passed away in May 2014, at the age of 41. To honour his work in this field, his home institute, the Laboratoire J.-L. Lagrange at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, and ESO established a prize in his memory. Since 2015, the prize has been awarded biennially for the best PhD thesis completed in the field of high angular resolution optical astronomy.

Paranal Observatory is in restricted operations, with almost all systems available for scientific observations: FORS2 and KMOS@UT1, UVES and FLAMES @UT2, SPHERE and X-Shooter@UT3, MUSE@UT4 with the AOF, ESPRESSO at the incoherent combined focus, OmegaCAM@VST, VIRCAM@VISTA, and Gravity/MATISSE/PIONIER @ VLTI. HAWK-I@UT4 recommissioning is foreseen for later in Q1. VISIR recommissioning is suspended until Q2 at the earliest. Regular operations with the NTT and 3.6m telescopes are ongoing at La Silla. Visitors are performing their observations remotely in designated visitor mode. APEX ended the year with restricted operations, almost 1300 hours of hours on sky, and the last run (ever) of one of the most successful APEX instruments ever, i.e., LABOCA. Currently scientific operations are suspended as the annual deep telescope and instrument maintenance is taking place. This period is aligned with the worst weather season for science at the site, the 'Altiplanic winter'.

While the COVID-19 pandemic persists all around the world, ALMA staff at the JAO and in the regions continue to work towards bringing the array back online, with the ultimate goal to resume science operations and deliver high-quality science data to its users. At this moment, the ALMA antennas are in the process of being powered up and inspected after having been stowed for about 300 days.