The 99th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met on 15–17 November 2016. A total of 1044 (10-hour equivalent) nights of Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, VISTA, VST, the 3.6-metre and NTT and APEX telescopes. Of these, 193 nights were allocated to filler programmes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is 9 February 2017, see announcement.

From October to December 2016, Unit Telescope 4 (UT4) was shut down to install the new Deformable Secondary Mirror (DSM), as part of the Adaptive Optics Faciity (AOF) project. The joint planning by the AOF Project and Paranal teams allowed a very efficient re-commissioning of the telescope, and tests were also successfully performed on some of the AOF sub-systems.

3rd Azores School on Observational Cosmology
5th Azores International Advanced School in Space Sciences
Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal, 27 August – 2 September 2017

In the coming years a range of ground- and space-based facilities will gather an unprecedented amount of high-quality data in observational astrophysics and cosmology. These will allow open cosmological problems, e.g., nature of dark matter, dark energy, inflation and neutrino masses, to be tackled, all of which require new physics. In order to fully exploit these datasets, the interplay of a broad range of expertise, encompassing theory, phenomenology, high performance computing, data analysis and instrumentation, is required.

Mergers, Proto-clusters, and Star Formation in Overdense Environments
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 17 – 21 July 2017

Proto-clusters, high redshift galaxy clusters, and merging clusters represent the initial stages in the formation of largest gravitationally-bound structures in the Universe. (Proto-)cluster assembly via mergers and accretion has a decisive impact on the subsequent cluster evolution, and is thus an important process to understand. The aim of  GCF2017 is to discuss cluster formation over the last ten billion years, from its beginnings to the present day.

The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an ESO Public Survey carried out at the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) with the OmegaCAM instrument. KiDs is a weak lensing shear tomography survey and its core science drivers are to map the large scale matter distribution in the Universe and constrain the equation of state of Dark Energy. This catalogue is the first weak lensing shear dataset from KiDS Data Release 3 (DR3) images, based on 454 tiles and a total area of 449.7 square degrees.

The allocation of ESO telescope time for Period 99 (1 April – 30 September 2017) is emailed today. With the release of the telescope schedule, preparation of Service Mode (SM) observations (Phase 2) starts. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 99 observations is 9 February 2017.

ESO and Excellence Cluster Universe Workshop
ESO Headquarters, Garching Germany, 24–28 July 2017

The fate of a galaxy is governed by an intricate ballet of gas flows: the flow of cool gas into the system, the conversion of these baryons into stars, and the ejection of gas enriched with heavy elements. Determining what rules and mutually relates these three aspects still remains a critical and very complex problem in cosmology and is the core topic of this workshop.

Intra-Chile Workshop, Vitacura, Santiago, Chile, 2–3 March 2017

Globular clusters are no longer a proxy for a single stellar population. High-precision photometric and spectroscopic observations have been revealing multiple generations in young and old massive clusters in the Milky Way and beyond. The workshop will bring together both observers and theoreticians who are trying to solve the question of how star clusters form and evolve, and the connection with their host galaxy.

The COSMOS2015 catalogue (Laigle et al. 2016) contains precise photometric redshifts and stellar masses for more than half a million objects over the 2 square degree COSMOS field. Including YJHKs DR2 images from the UltraVISTA ultra-deep near-infrared survey, Y-band from Subaru/Hyper-Suprime-Cam and infrared data from the SPLASH Spitzer legacy programme, this near-infrared selected catalogue is highly optimised for the study of galaxy evolution and environments in the early Universe.

More than ninety thousand spectra and a redshift catalogue have now been released from the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS), the Public Spectroscopic Survey carried out under ESO Large Programme 182.A-0886, PI L. Guzzo. This is the largest spectroscopic galaxy redshift survey conducted so far with VLT Paranal facilities.