The CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES) has been upgraded to a cross-dispersed high-resolution infrared spectrograph. The upgraded CRIRES is now offered to the community for Science Verification (SV) for three or four nights in September 2021. All astronomers are invited to participate in this opportunity to obtain unique science with the upgraded CRIRES and thus to demonstrate its scientific capabilities. ESO encourages the community to submit highly challenging or risky science observations that will push CRIRES to its limits in order to better understand the performance parameter space and its envelope.

The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. In this Issue 183 our readers will find a summary of ESO’s Strategy for the 2020s, learn about the prospects for future exoplanet imaging based on high-precision astrometric studies with VLT/SPHERE, as well as explore the low-surface brightness regime of galaxies thanks to the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS).

Over the past several weeks, ALMA has continued to conduct PI science observations on a best-effort basis while the recovery of the Arrays has been ongoing. The first set of antenna relocations was completed on May 10, 2021, moving the 12-m Array into the C43-6 configuration. In addition, PI science using eight antennas on the 7-m Array began on May 18, 2021. The plan is to go through all remaining configurations (C43-7 to C43-10) by the end of Cycle 7, although for a shorter duration than originally planned for each configuration.

Since 2020 the ESO Cosmic Duologue series has aimed to cover the biggest questions in astronomy in a lively way. For each duologue, ESO invites two speakers to give short, dynamic talks, presenting their side of a challenging scientific topic or related to the sociology of science. Following on from the talks, the speakers debate the topic further, with the help of a moderator, and answer questions from the audience. The duologues are streamed live on a dedicated YouTube channel. The links to the videos of all past events can be found here. We invite all astronomers from the community, at any stage of their career, to propose a topic, a list of potential speakers and moderator(s) for the new series, planned for October 2021 through January 2022.

A detailed report of the Cycle 8 2021 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.