The 110th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met online in May 2022. Based on the committee’s recommendations to the ESO Director General, a total of 2221 (10-hour equivalent) nights of (Designated) Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, 3.6-metre and NTT, and APEX telescopes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 observations is Thursday, 4 August 2022; see the separate announcement for further details.

With the release of the La Silla Paranal telescope schedule, the Phase 2 preparation for runs scheduled in Service Mode begins. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 110 observations is Thursday, 4 August 2022.

A  VLTI-HOW: The VLTI High angular resolution Observations Workshop will take place at ESO Vitacura, Santiago, Chile on 10-21 October 2022. This ESO/IAU predominantly hands-on workshop aims at training a new generation of scientists from Chile and Latin American countries in how to access, analyse, and use Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) data for their research projects. The curriculum will also cover topics important for career development such as proposal and grant writing, job hunting, and work ethics. Moreover, the workshop will encourage new scientific collaborations across nations.

The Near InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) instrument, mounted on ESO’s 3.6-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, has successfully performed its first observations. The instrument will focus its search on rocky worlds, which are key targets for understanding how planets form and evolve, and are the most likely planets where life may develop. NIRPS will search for these rocky exoplanets around small, cool red dwarf stars — the most common type of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, which have masses from about two to ten times smaller than our Sun.

A major technical intervention was completed on ESPRESSO in May to address the instrument stability and the detector system performances. The improvement has been noticeable, achieving an internal drift below 10 cm/s and the detector’s readout noise below 6e- for the fast readout mode. The instrument is back in operation. The updated ESPRESSO performances will be included in the next version of the User Manual.

The European Interferometry Initiative (EII) is announcing its 11th VLTI School, funded by the Opticon/Radionet Pilot programme, which will take place in Budapest between 12 and 17 June 2023. The school is aimed at PhD students, postdocs and astronomers who are new to optical interferometry. The training will address basics of optical interferometry theory, data reduction and interpretation, model fitting, image reconstruction, as well as observation proposals preparation for VLTI. The local organising institute is the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary.  

A preview of the Cycles 9, 10 and 11 ALMA Configuration Schedule is now available. This schedule is being released to allow ALMA users to plan their proposal strategy for the next three Cycles.

A detailed report of the ALMA Cycle 9 Proposal Submission Statistics is now available. The report provides a summary of items such as the number of submitted proposals and time requested, subscription rates, and comparisons with the number of hours requested in previous Cycles. The report can be downloaded as a pdf document.

UltraVISTA (PIs J. Dunlop, M. Franx, J. Fynbo, O. LeFèvre, Programme ID 179.A-2005, 198.A-2003) is an ultra-deep near-infrared ESO Public Survey targeting the central region of the COSMOS field. This public survey started in April 2010 and has been completed during the VISTA Public Survey Cycle II in 2022. This new release (DR4.1) contains two independent multi-wavelength photometric catalogues, computed using different techniques. The CLASSIC catalogue is generated using an aperture photometric measurement method as that adopted in the previous COSMOS2015 catalogue. The second catalogue, labelled FARMER, is created using a new profile-fitting photometric tool which the UltraVISTA team developed. The FARMER catalogue uses a source list derived independently from the CLASSIC one. The data present in the previous COSMOS2015 catalogue have been reprocessed to take advantage of the improved astrometry from the Gaia reference catalogue.

Science workshops are an essential component of ESO's programmes and represent a unique opportunity to promote and foster ideas and collaborations within the scientific community. Every year, through the Directorate for Science, ESO provides support and funding to organise scientific workshops in Santiago and in Garching, as well as co-funding some external workshops (see ESO Workshops calendar). A new Call has been issued inviting community astronomers to submit proposals for ESO workshops to be held in 2023. Community astronomers can submit their proposals alone or teaming up with ESO staff and fellows in Chile and/or in Germany. Note that ESO has implemented a Code of Conduct for Workshops and Conferences, which applies to all meetings funded by ESO, hosted at ESO premises or organised as online events.