ESO is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals (CfP) for development studies for ALMA upgrades, with a deadline for proposal submission on Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 11:00am CEST. Interested institutes should register on the In-Tend portal and express interest in the ALMA Development Studies 2025 with reference FCFP-129429-AMA. The specific focus of this call includes the relevance to the implementation of the ALMA Development Roadmap priorities, and particularly the development of new receiver components allowing an expansion to 4x the current IF bandwidth, as well as software initiatives that enable and maximize the science output of the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade.

Following an extended review and acceptance process, the 4MOST survey management plan (SMP) for the five year public surveys is now available. The 4MOST SMP documents describe the timeline of the public releases, the project organisation, the preparation and data acquisition, data processing and publication of the science data products. It includes an extended description of the single surveys, with detailed specific information on the target selection and on the science data products associated with the individual science cases. While the raw data are immediately public, the science data products will be released according to the data release plan detailed in the document available from the 4MOST SMP web page.

ESO will host a SOXS day on July 1, 2025, to present the SOXS instrument and its science opportunitites to the community. During this day, talks will be delivered on the instrument capabilites and the operations model, the science opportunities and the GTO programme, and the policies that will govern the operations of SOXS. Further, there will be time for questions and discussions. The meeting will be held at the ESO HQ in Garching in hybrid mode. Potential participants are kindly asked to register.

Good science deserves great communication! ESO is pleased to announce the first ESO science writing school, which will take place over one week in August, at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany. This school is designed to empower (mostly) PhD students and early-career postdocs with the tools and confidence to effectively present their scientific research – both in writing and in person.

This is the collection of reduced spectra from the high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph NIRPS (Near Infra-Red Planet Searcher) in operation at the ESO La Silla 3.6m telescope. NIRPS complements HARPS, extending its capability into the infrared. It offers a wavelength range from 970 to 1850 nm. The median resolving power is 82000 in the High Accuracy mode and 75000 in High Efficiency mode.

The first release of the PHANGS–MUSE Nebular Catalogue (PI: Schinnerer) is now available from the ESO Science Archive Facility. This release is based on integral-field spectroscopic observations obtained with the MUSE instrument at the VLT, primarily under the PHANGS–MUSE Large Programme, and supplemented by data from additional ESO programmes (see PHANGS-MUSE release description).

The latest Edition of ESO's Science and Technology Journal, The Messenger, is now available online. In this issue 194 you will find out about several updates on telescopes and instrumentation in La Silla and Paranal observatories, like the Near-InfraRed Planet Searcher (NIRPS) and its combination with NIRPS to create a unique dual optical-infrared precision velocimeter or the upcoming PoET: the Paranal solar ESPRESSO Telescope. The Astronomical Science section features articles on how VLT/MUSE has enabled studies of the inner globular cluster systems of massive galaxies, as well as about the discovery of young stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies and what they tell us about their recent infall into the Milky Way.  

The ePESSTO+ collection (PI: Inserra, ESO program IDs 1103.D-0328 and 106.216C, instruments EFOSC and SOFI) gathers a detailed spectroscopic follow up of supernovae at the extremes of the known population, e.g. the most luminous, the faintest, the fast declining, etc. This second release contains 1215 spectra for 689 objects, observed from October 2021 to June 2023, with related 602 infrared images. It uses standard EFOSC2 setups with resolutions of 13-17Å between 3680-10320Å, SOFI spectroscopy for brighter science targets, with the blue and red (rarely) grisms (resolutions 23Å - 33Å), and SOFI imaging with broadband JHKs filters. The 101 key science targets of this release (see Table 3 of the DR2 release description) complement the 178 of previous release, with 11 key targets being in common (see Table 3 of the DR1 release description).

Multi-phase, Multi-temperature, and Complex (MMC2025) will be an exciting workshop exploring how feedback mechanisms -particularly AGN and stellar feedback - shape galaxy and large-scale structure evolution. Despite progress, key challenges remain in understanding the relation between gas content and star formation of galaxies in low-mass halos and the properties of the circum-galactic medium (CGM). This event will bring together experts to discuss the latest observations and simulations, highlighting the multi-phase nature of the CGM, its interaction with feedback processes, and insights from X-ray, SZ, IFU, radio, and submillimeter data. Don’t miss this opportunity to bridge theory and observation in the quest to understand cosmic structure formation. Deadline for abstract submission: 30 April 2025.

ESO received 913 valid proposals for observations in Period 116 (1 October 2025 - 30 April 2026, with a duration of 7 months). The deadline for proposal submission was 20 March 2025. On the VLT, the most demanded ESO instrument was MUSE with a request of 3034.5 hours (i.e. 379.3 nights of an average duration of 8 hours), followed by ESPRESSO with 2594.8 hours, and XSHOOTER with 2221.2 hours. HARPS/NIRPS on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope was the most demanded instrument at La Silla, with a combined request of 3277 hours. The plot above shows the number pf ESO Proposals/PIs since Period 62. The fluctuations in the recent years are due to Large Programmes being offered only in even periods since P106. The peak in P106 is due to the extension of the proposal submission deadline during the pandemic.