Due to recent developments related to SOXS at the NTT, Large Programme proposals will be accepted in Period 106 for SOFI runs in Period 106 and for EFOSC2 runs in Periods 106 and 107. Users should be aware, however, that these programmes may be terminated ahead of the expected time, depending on the progress with SOXS. This will be reviewed again ahead of the release of the Period 108 Call for Proposals.

ESO Garching, Germany, 12–16 October 2020 

Following the spread of COVID-19 (the coronavirus), this workshop has been postponed from April to October and registration has been re-opened. All participants who registered for the original workshop should register again to confirm their attendance in October. More information about the workshop itself can be found below and via the workshop website.

The VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy Public Survey (VIKING, ESO Programme ID: 179.A-2005, PIs: A. Edge and W. Sutherland) is a wide area (covering a final area of 1350 square degrees), intermediate-depth (5-sigma detection limit J~21 on Vega system) near-infrared imaging survey, in the five broadband filters Z, Y, J, H, Ks. The sky coverage has maximum overlap with the Kilo-Degree Survey KiDS in the optical bands. This fourth and final VIKING data release covers all of the highest quality data taken during the survey to its completion and, when combined with the first three releases, includes all fields that met the team’s quality control thresholds in seeing (< 1.3”) and atmospheric transmission (thin cirrus or clearer).

The VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS, ESO Programme ID: 79.A-2010, PI R. McMahon) is a wide-area, multi-band, near-infrared survey, which when combined with other VISTA public surveys, will result in the coverage of the whole southern celestial hemisphere (declination < 0; 20 000 square degrees), to a depth 30 times fainter than 2MASS/DENIS in at least two filters (J and Ks), with a minimum exposure time of 60 seconds per filter and a median 5-sigma point source depth of AB = 20.8 and 20.0 in J and Ks filters respectively.

The MUSE Library of Stellar Spectra (Ivanov et al. 2019) provides the community with a set of 1D high signal-to-noise spectra with reliable continuum shapes, which populate all major sequences on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with 3-6 bright stars per spectral type. This first data release contains 35 high-quality MUSE spectra. These stars cover the following parameter space: effective temperatures between 2600 and 33000K, log(g) between 0.6 and 4.5, and  [Fe/H] from -1.22 to 0.55. The 1D spectra cover a wavelength range from 4800 to 9300 Angstrom, with a resolving power varying from 1750 to 3750 and, given the IFU spectral capabilites of MUSE, are not subject to slit losses.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 106 (1 October 2020 – 31 March 2021) has been released. Please consult the Period 106 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 26 March 2020.

ESO strongly encourages applicants to formulate the scientific rationales in their proposals taking into account the anonymisation rules and examples described in this link, which describes the paradigm of the Dual-Anonymous Peer Review (DAPR). While DAPR will be implemented in full in the future and proposal anonymisation is not mandatory in Period 106, applicants should use this opportunity as a dry run to practice writing proposals in the required style.

ESO's Science Prioritisation Working Group is tasked with reviewing the ESO programme from a scientific perspective. This working group is composed of members of the Scientific Technical committee (STC), the Users Committee (UC) and ESO staff. The working group has devised a survey to better understand the priorities of the ESO community for the upcoming decade. Invitations to answer the survey have been emailed to astronomers registered on the ESO User Portal and/or on the ALMA Science Portal. If you have received a personal invitation, use the provided link with your unique token. In case you have not received an invitation, or you wish to share the poll with unregistered colleagues, please use this registration link. Please answer the poll on 28 February 2020.

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 29 and 30 April 2020. 

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 you'd like to pitch for an ESO press release, please send your paper to ESO's Public Information Officer Barbara Ferreira via e-mail at pio@eso.org.