The VISTA Magellanic Survey (VMC) – one of the six public surveys current at the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) – aims at determining the spatially resolved star formation history and 3D geometry of the Magellanic system. The VMC survey is designed to reach stars below the oldest main-sequence turn-off and the multi-epoch strategy enables accurate Ks mean magnitudes for variable stars, e.g. RR Lyrae stars and Cepheids, to be measured. Catalogues from some of the deep co-added survey images have now been released.

VIDEO is a deep near-infrared survey which targets ~12 square degrees over the Elais-S1, XMM-LSS, and extended Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) extragalactic fields. VIDEO belongs to the suite of six public surveys being conducted at the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). First data releases of the Elais-S1 and CDFS fields have just been made available.

The latest integral field spectrograph (IFS) on the VLT, the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), has recently undergone its first commissioning period - see details in the Release. A second commissioning period will take place in April followed by Science Verification a few months later. MUSE is first offered to the community for observation in Period 94 (October 2014 – March 2015).

A new observing time calculator is now available for the Artemis 350µm camera offered on APEX in Period 94. This calculator assumes a field of view of 4.7×2.5 arcminutes, with fully sampled pixels in the 350µm focal plane. The 450µm and 200µm planes are not offered in Period 94. Note that this is only a preliminary version of the calculator, as the full commissioning of Artemis will be performed in June 2014.

Statistics on refereed publications in 2013 that make use of data from ESO telescopes have been released by the ESO library. The statistics are calculated using the ESO Telescope Bibliography (telbib), a database of refereed publications that use ESO data. The annual summary of the publication statistics, with breakdown by telescopes and instruments and comparison with other observatories, is available as Basic ESO Publication Statistics.

The zCOSMOS-bright advanced data products are now available via the Science Data Products query form of the ESO Archive. The zCOSMOS large programme on the VLT used VIMOS for a redshift survey in the 1.7 square degree COSMOS field. The zCOSMOS-bright Data Release 2 made available 10643 spectra to i_AB < 22.5 mag.

The ALMA Observatory has issued a news update on the status of ALMA Cycle 1 observations. The planned configurations and the next steps for commissioning are also included. Read the report in PDF.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes during Period 94 (1 October 2014 - 31 March 2015) has been released.

Please consult the Call for Proposals 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 deadline is 12:00 CET Thursday 27 March 2014.

A call for ideas for scientific projects with the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory has been issued.

This call opens new opportunities for large scientific projects at the NTT. In order to enable telescope access for innovative ideas, upgraded or new scientific instruments, up to 50% of the telescope time from 2016 to 2020 will be made available to selected projects in return for contributions to the NTT operation.

For the first phase of the definition of these projects, ESO is requesting ideas for scientific projects to be submitted no later than 31 March 2014. For details see the full text of the Call in PDF.

The User Support Department (USD) invites principal investigators and their Phase 2 delegates to participate in the most recent user feedback campaign. This newly revamped survey is designed to provide USD with the opinions of the science community on a number of services. As such it is an important way for the department to know where we are doing well, and where there is room for improvement.

Participating in the survey should take no more than 5-10 minutes, and it can be found here.