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.

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.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 22–26 June 2020 

The recently reported discord among Hubble constant determinations – based on the Universe as it is today versus as it was shortly after the Big Bang – is puzzling cosmologists and astrophysicists alike. With the discord's significance rising thanks to improved measurements, the community is getting increasingly excited about the potential for modifications to cosmology. However, questions remain whether systematic uncertainties and biases are sufficiently understood and under control.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 13–17 July 2020 

Please mark your calendars and register to participate in the second edition of The Early Stages of Galaxy Cluster Formation (GCF) 2020: Mergers, Proto-clusters, and Star Formation in Overdense Environments. Proto-clusters, high redshift galaxy clusters, and merging clusters represent the initial stages in the formation of largest gravitationally-bound structures in the Universe. Forming via mergers and accretion, (proto-)cluster assembly has a decisive impact on their subsequent evolution, and is thus an important process to understand. The aim of GCF2020 is to discuss cluster formation over the last roughly ten billion years, from its beginnings to the present day, with a particular focus on the progress and developments since our first GCF meeting in 2017.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 14–18 September 2020 

The detection in 2017 of electromagnetic light from a pair of merging neutron stars first identified in gravitational waves ushered in a new era for astronomy. This multi-messenger era is rapidly becoming established with the identification of gravitational wave sources and astrophysical neutrinos occurring at ever-increasing rates, although joint electromagnetic detection remains challenging. This meeting will seek to review the recent dramatic progress in this field, evaluating the science from the current LIGO/VIRGO O3 run that will complete before the workshop. It will also look to what future ESO (E-ELT, next-generation VLT instruments) and ESA (ATHENA, LISA, THESEUS) projects contribute to this nascent field. 

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.

Following the recommendation of the Time Allocation Working Group and to support the rehaul of the whole proposal handling system, ESO is now requesting all science users provide more detailed information in their User Portal profile.  This is to enable further and more accurate statistical studies on time allocation systematics, to improve the optimisation of proposal distribution in the current system (for example, to support Distributed Peer Review, and enable more complete bibliometric analyses).

MATISSE is the newly commissioned mid-infrared 4-telescope beam combiner for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. ESO will offer MATISSE with fringe tracking for Science Verification (SV) on four AT nights. While MATISSE has already been offered since Period 103 (starting 1 April 2019), this SV call aims to demonstrate the new capabilities enabled by using GRAVITY as a fringe tracker for MATISSE: updated sensitivity limits and extend spectral coverage.