The ESO research studentship programme provides an outstanding opportunity for PhD students to experience the exciting scientific environment at one of the world's leading observatories. ESO's studentship positions are open to students enrolled in a university PhD programme in astronomy or related fields. Students accepted into the programme work on their doctoral project under the formal supervision of their home university supervisor, but they come to ESO to work and study under the co-supervision of an ESO staff astronomer for a period of between one and two years.

The ESO Public Survey project VMC, ESO program 179.B-2003, PI M. R. Cioni, targets the Magellanic Cloud system in three filters: Y, J and Ks. The main goals are the determination of the spatially resolved star formation history and study the three-dimensional geometry of the system. This new data release DR6 provides the complete set of observations covering the Large Magellanic Cloud, ~110 deg², taken between November 2009 and October 2018. It contains both newly released observations (61 tiles) and updated versions of the 7 LMC survey tiles previously released, reprocessed by CASU using the newer version of the pipeline v1.5 which includes improved photometric calibration.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory are jointly organising a workshop with the main goal of maximising the science impact of surveys conducted by both organisation’s facilities.  The aims of the workshop are to raise awareness across the respective communities of survey capabilities and to build liaisons in preparation of synergetic surveys. To achieve this, the workshop will have sessions focussing on planned surveys and upcoming survey facilities, including SKA pathfinder and precursor instruments as well as the SKA, and ESO’s optical, near infrared and mm facilities. It will cover a variety of research areas, from transients and Galactic star formation to galaxy evolution and cosmology. In addition, ample time will be reserved for more focussed discussion sessions to forge synergies between different teams and develop plans for collaborative surveys.

This data release provides access to reduced scientific 1D spectra obtained with FORS2, the visual and near-UV FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 on the VLT. Data acquired with one of the three spectroscopic modes of FORS2 (within the wavelength range of 330-1100 nm) are included in this release. These modes are long-slit spectroscopy (LSS) using a mask with 6.8′ slit length of different widths, and multi-object spectroscopy with movable slit blades (MOS, slit length about 20′′) or with masks (MXU, arbitrary slit length). The spectroscopic data have been reduced using the FORS2 pipeline version 5.6.1 or higher. Processing includes flat fielding, wavelength calibration, correction of spatial distortion, sky subtraction, optimal extraction of spectra, and flux calibration. The FORS2 pipeline extracts spectra from a single exposure. If several exposures on the same target are executed within the same observing template, the additional reduction step of stacking them together is performed using the ESOTK pipeline (version 0.9.5 or higher). In this case the single exposure spectra are made available as associated files, while the combined spectrum becomes the primary product. 

Proposals are invited for the Science Verification of the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS), a new VLT near-infrared instrument at the Cassegrain focus of UT4. ERIS has two science arms, SPIFFIER and NIX. SPIFFIER (IFS) is a medium-resolution integral field spectrograph covering J to K band. NIX is capable of imaging between J and M band and pupil-plane coronography. ERIS is designed to be used in conjunction with UT4's deformable secondary mirror. The atmospheric turbulence can be sensed with either a natural guide star, or a single artificial star generated with the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF).