Due to the COVID-19 outbreak that has spread to Chile, the ALMA Director has made the decision to suspend science operations with ALMA, effective immediately. This decision has been taken to protect the safety of ALMA staff, many of whom travel long distances by bus and by plane to reach the remote ALMA site in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

ALMA is strongly committed to ensure that the proposal review process is as fair and impartial as possible. Analysis of the proposal rankings in previous cycles has identified systematics that may signify the presence of biases in the review process (see Systematics in the ALMA Proposal Review Rankings). In an effort to reduce biases as much as possible, ALMA will use a dual-anonymous proposal review process starting in Cycle 8.

Due to recent developments related to SOXS at the NTT, Large Programme proposals will be accepted in Period 106 for SOFI runs in Period 106 and for EFOSC2 runs in Periods 106 and 107. Users should be aware, however, that these programmes may be terminated ahead of the expected time, depending on the progress with SOXS. This will be reviewed again ahead of the release of the Period 108 Call for Proposals.

ESO Garching, Germany, 12–16 October 2020 

Following the spread of COVID-19 (the coronavirus), this workshop has been postponed from April to October and registration has been re-opened. All participants who registered for the original workshop should register again to confirm their attendance in October. More information about the workshop itself can be found below and via the workshop website.

The VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy Public Survey (VIKING, ESO Programme ID: 179.A-2005, PIs: A. Edge and W. Sutherland) is a wide area (covering a final area of 1350 square degrees), intermediate-depth (5-sigma detection limit J~21 on Vega system) near-infrared imaging survey, in the five broadband filters Z, Y, J, H, Ks. The sky coverage has maximum overlap with the Kilo-Degree Survey KiDS in the optical bands. This fourth and final VIKING data release covers all of the highest quality data taken during the survey to its completion and, when combined with the first three releases, includes all fields that met the team’s quality control thresholds in seeing (< 1.3”) and atmospheric transmission (thin cirrus or clearer).

The VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS, ESO Programme ID: 79.A-2010, PI R. McMahon) is a wide-area, multi-band, near-infrared survey, which when combined with other VISTA public surveys, will result in the coverage of the whole southern celestial hemisphere (declination < 0; 20 000 square degrees), to a depth 30 times fainter than 2MASS/DENIS in at least two filters (J and Ks), with a minimum exposure time of 60 seconds per filter and a median 5-sigma point source depth of AB = 20.8 and 20.0 in J and Ks filters respectively.

The MUSE Library of Stellar Spectra (Ivanov et al. 2019) provides the community with a set of 1D high signal-to-noise spectra with reliable continuum shapes, which populate all major sequences on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with 3-6 bright stars per spectral type. This first data release contains 35 high-quality MUSE spectra. These stars cover the following parameter space: effective temperatures between 2600 and 33000K, log(g) between 0.6 and 4.5, and  [Fe/H] from -1.22 to 0.55. The 1D spectra cover a wavelength range from 4800 to 9300 Angstrom, with a resolving power varying from 1750 to 3750 and, given the IFU spectral capabilites of MUSE, are not subject to slit losses.

ESO's Science Prioritisation Working Group is tasked with reviewing the ESO programme from a scientific perspective. This working group is composed of members of the Scientific Technical committee (STC), the Users Committee (UC) and ESO staff. The working group has devised a survey to better understand the priorities of the ESO community for the upcoming decade. Invitations to answer the survey have been emailed to astronomers registered on the ESO User Portal and/or on the ALMA Science Portal. If you have received a personal invitation, use the provided link with your unique token. In case you have not received an invitation, or you wish to share the poll with unregistered colleagues, please use this registration link. Please answer the poll on 28 February 2020.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 22–26 June 2020 

The recently reported discord among Hubble constant determinations – based on the Universe as it is today versus as it was shortly after the Big Bang – is puzzling cosmologists and astrophysicists alike. With the discord's significance rising thanks to improved measurements, the community is getting increasingly excited about the potential for modifications to cosmology. However, questions remain whether systematic uncertainties and biases are sufficiently understood and under control.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 13–17 July 2020 

Please mark your calendars and register to participate in the second edition of The Early Stages of Galaxy Cluster Formation (GCF) 2020: Mergers, Proto-clusters, and Star Formation in Overdense Environments. Proto-clusters, high redshift galaxy clusters, and merging clusters represent the initial stages in the formation of largest gravitationally-bound structures in the Universe. Forming via mergers and accretion, (proto-)cluster assembly has a decisive impact on their subsequent evolution, and is thus an important process to understand. The aim of GCF2020 is to discuss cluster formation over the last roughly ten billion years, from its beginnings to the present day, with a particular focus on the progress and developments since our first GCF meeting in 2017.