The European ARC network is launching the new virtual talk series "ALMA recounts of Cosmic Conundrums". In every talk of this series a major astronomical question is discussed. The invited speaker will describe the context of the question and then focuses on the ALMA contribution to the field, past and future. The aim of the series is to highlight the unparalleled contribution of ALMA to the broader astronomical landscape and to provide an outlook towards the future.

Gaia-ESO is a Public Spectroscopic Survey carried out with GIRAFFE and UVES on the VLT between 2012 and 2018. The survey targeted more than 100,000 stars, with 115,000 actually observed by the end of the survey. These stars are selected across all major components of the Milky Way, from halo to star-forming regions, with the goal of providing a homogeneous overview of their kinematics and elemental abundance distributions.

The VISTA Cycle 2 ESO Public Survey project -VVV eXtended- PI D. Minniti, P. Lucas, is carried out with VIRCAM on VISTA in the JHKs filters and covers a total of ~1540 deg² of the southern Galactic plane. The VVVX DR1.1 complements DR1 by mainly providing i) the missing Ks time series and ii) the source lists generated from the pawprints published in DR1, which were observed between July 2016 and March 2018. The released data total about 9 TB. Science products generated from observations in the time interval from April 2018 to October 2019 are accessible in the already published DR2 release.

A new interactive Grafana dashboard has made publicly available with the relevant results of the line intensity monitoring program, part of the APEX observatory calibration plan. An automated data reduction pipeline has recently been developed by the APEX Sciops team to analyse the scans of reference CO and HCN transitions in pointing sources. This new interface allows PIs to access the database with all these calibration observations, irrespectively of which specific project the observation was taken on.

The deadline for proposal submission for Period 109 (1 April 2022 - 30 September 2022) was 23 September, 2021. The number of submitted proposals for Period 109 was 878, similar to that in previous Periods, so the plateau in the number of submitted proposals observed since several years remains. On the VLT the most requested instrument was MUSE with 255 requested nights, followed by X-Shooter with 252 nights, UVES (138n), ESPRESSO-1UT (132n) and CRIRES (122n). HARPS on the 3.6-metre telescope was the most demanded instrument at La Silla, with a request of 154 nights.

The ESO Office for Science in the Directorate of Science is happy to announce the release of the proceedings of the Hypatia Colloquium series 2021. The booklet collects the contribution from the speakers of the series 2021 in the form of proceedings on the topic of their talks. By reading it our community have access to a portrait of the extraordinary quality of science done by early career astronomers.

Encouraged by the positive response of the community to the Hypatia Colloquium series 2021, the ESO Office for Science in the Directorate of Science is glad to organise the Hypatia Colloquium series 2022. PhD students and early postdocs (max 3 years from the PhD) working in any field of theoretical and observational astronomy and astrophysics are invited to apply to be nominated as speaker of the Hypatia Colloquium, by submitting an abstract using the dedicated form.

ALMA is very pleased to share the news that on the evening of 1 October, the first observations for Cycle 8 2021 were successfully completed and observing has continued since then. The data sets are currently being quality-assessed and some data have already been delivered to the respective principal investigators.

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. However, they come to ESO to work and study under the co-supervision of an ESO staff astronomer for a minimum of six months and up to two years.

The largest adaptive mirror ever built, the M4 mirror for ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), has reached an important milestone in its development: all six petal-shaped segments that make up the mirror are now completed. M4, the fourth mirror in the light path of the telescope, can change shape quickly and very precisely, and is a key part of the ELT’s adaptive optics system.