31 Aug 2016:

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 99 (1 April 2017 – 30 September 2017) 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 29 September 2016.

26 Aug 2016:

3–7 July 2017, ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany

Stars are mostly found in binary and multiple systems: at least 50% of all solar-like stars have companions and that fraction approaches 100% for the most massive stars. A large fraction of these systems will interact in some way and alter the structure and evolution of the components, leading to the production of exotic objects beyond standard stellar evolution models. This workshop (ImBaSE 2017) will examine in detail the impact of binaries on stellar evolution from observational and theoretical viewpoints.

22 Aug 2016:

16–19 January 2017, ESO Vitacura, Santiago, Chile

A complete, consistent calibration plan for each data set, fulfilling quality control criteria, was recognized as a cornerstone of VLT operation. In 2007, ESO organized its first calibration workshop and ten years later the 2017 ESO Calibration Workshop will bring together astronomers and instrument scientists to share their experiences, engage in open discussions, challenge current limitations and develop creative concepts for better calibration in the future.

20 Aug 2016:

ESO has a prominent post-doctoral fellowship programme in both Garching (Germany) and Santiago (Chile), with a yearly application deadline (15 October). The goal of these fellowships is to offer outstanding early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their independent research programmes in an exciting scientific environment with close contact to the activities and staff at ESO.

19 Aug 2016:

The ESO research studentship programme provides an outstanding opportunity for Ph.D. students to experience the exciting scientific environment at one of the world's leading observatories for a period of up to two years.

18 Aug 2016:

If you wish to conduct a PhD in astronomy-astrophysics within one of the largest centres of astrophysical research in the world, which covers every subject from planets, stars, and galaxies to cosmology, you should seriously consider applying to the IMPRS studentship programme in Munich.

17 Aug 2016:

The new ALMA Science Verification (SV) release contains commissioning test data of quasars obtained during the long baseline campaigns in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The data were taken to study the stability of the relative amplitude and phase of the system and the atmosphere. See the ALMA announcement for more details and the ALMA SV page for a description of the datasets available.

17 Aug 2016:

Principal Investigators (PIs) of ALMA Cycle 4 proposals received notification letters of the proposal review results on 8 August 2016. A total of 707 proposals were selected for scheduling on ALMA from among the 1573 received; two of the 29 Large Programmes were selected. The complete list of A+B projects can be found here.

16 Aug 2016:

All images obtained with the High Acuity Wide field K-band Imager (HAWK-I), from the beginning of regular operations (April 2008) until October 2015 are now published as reduced data (burst mode excluded) via the ESO Science Archive Facility.

15 Aug 2016:

A new data release of science products resulting from the VPHAS+ (VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge) Public Survey is now available via the dedicated Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

31 Jul 2016:

High-quality echelle spectra of a homogeneous sample of 100 QSOs with redshifts between 3.5 and 4.5, covering the spectral range from 315 to 2500 nm, have been obtained in the course of the ESO observing programme "Quasars and their absorption lines: a legacy survey of the high-redshift Universe with VLT/X-shooter" (Programme 189.A-0424; PI Sebastien Lopez). This dataset represents the largest spectroscopic survey of high-redshift QSOs with simultaneous rest-frame UV/optical coverage to date, enabling a wide range of research topics, including intergalactic medium, active galactic nuclei and cosmology (Lopez et al. 2016).