The Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) on VLT UT3 was commissioned in May – October 2014. Selected stellar targets were observed to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument. The data are packaged by science targets with sets of matching calibration data and are available from the SPHERE commissioning page.

Following the call for ideas for selection of target field(s) for a Public MUSE Deep Field, six submissions were received. These were carefully assessed by a committee of community experts. Many of the proposals were felt to be scientifically interesting, but unfortunately none were judged to be urgent or compelling enough to warrant the very large allocation of up to 60 nights laid out in the call, especially in view of the huge oversubscription for MUSE. The campaign strategy as originally envisioned also carried risks, which only crystallised during the assessment process, most significantly due to lack of agreement with JWST and HST to undertake a joint public campaign.

The ESO Public Survey ATLAS with VST is targeting 4500 square degrees of the southern sky in u,g,r,i,z to depths comparable to those of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS. Its wide wavelength coverage, from the u- to z-band complements the VISTA VHS and VIKING Surveys in YJHK bands. This third release provides stacked reduced images, associated source lists and the band-merged catalogue from the beginning of observations in August 2011 to end September 2014.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 100 (1 October 2017 – 31 March 2018) has been released. Please consult the Call for Proposals document for the main news items and policies related to applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities is contained on ESO webpages that are linked from the Call.
The deadline for proposals is 12:00 CEST 30 March 2017.

As the first generation of ESO Public Surveys was completing their observations on the VLT Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), ESO issued a Call for new VISTA Public Surveys. The extensive process of the evaluation of proposals and preparation of Survey Management Plans for the second cycle of VISTA Public surveys has now been almost completed. Seven new projects will start operations in P99 (April – September 2017) covering a wide range of scientific topics.

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 two workshops in Santiago and four in Garching, as well as co-funding some external workshops (see ESO Workshops calendar). A new Call has been issued inviting community astronomers to team up with ESO staff and fellows in Chile and/or in Germany to submit proposals for ESO workshops to be held in 2018.

Version 0.22.0 of the SPHERE pipeline has been released and can be downloaded from the VLT Instrument Pipelines page. This is the first version of the SPHERE pipeline that includes all necessary recipes as well as fully functional Reflex workflows to reduce SPHERE data from all standard modes of the instrument.

Statistics on refereed publications in 2016 that make use of data from ESO telescopes have just been published by the ESO library. The statistics are calculated using the ESO Telescope Bibliography (telbib), a database of refereed publications that use ESO data. In January 2017, the total number of publications in telbib resulting from the La Silla Paranal Observatory since 1996, passed 13 000. The annual summary of publication statistics, with breakdown by telescopes and instruments and comparison with other observatories, is available as Basic ESO Publication Statistics.

Special Session SS20 at EWASS, Prague, 26 – 30 June 2017

The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) Special Session No. 20, held on the first day (26 June) of the conference, will be devoted to the three particular modes of observing with ALMA that demonstrate the unique capabilities of the facility: High-Frequency Observations (specifically in Bands 8, 9 and 10); High-Angular-Resolution Observations with baslines up to 16 km; Solar Observations. Further details on the SS20 site.

ALMA Cycle 4 (1 Oct 2016 – 30 Sept 2017) continues and PI observations will resume on 1 March 2017 after the "austral winter" engineering period through February. More information on the ALMA Status page.