ESO, in collaboration with the Breakthrough Initiatives, has modified the Very Large Telescope mid-infrared imager (VISIR) to greatly enhance its ability to search for potentially habitable planets around both components of the binary Alpha Centauri, part of the closest stellar system to the Earth. Apart from this specific goal, a variety of science cases will benefit from the enhanced sensitivity and point spread function contrast. The community is invited to participate in this opportunity to carry out unique science and thus to demonstrate the scientific capabilities of this modified instrument. A Call for Proposals has been issued and the community is invited to submit proposals for the NEAR science demonstration using the new Phase 1 web interface.

The 104^th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met on 14-16 May 2019. Based on the committee's recommendations to the ESO Director General, a total of 1248 (8-hour equivalent) nights of Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, VISTA, VST, the 3.6-metre and NTT, and APEX telescopes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is Thursday 1 August, 2019; see the separate announcement for further details.

With the release of the telescope schedule, the preparation of Service Mode (SM) observations (Phase 2) starts. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 104 is 1 August 2019.

The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. In issue 176 you will find out about Astronomy in Ireland, the work of the ESO Users Committee, Science Verification results using MUSE's Narrow Field Mode, and how KMOS is being used to study low-mass galaxies across several epochs of cosmic time. This issue also contains articles presenting science highlights from ALMA, an article from ESO fellows and students outlining their development of an outreach programme, reports from workshops, and a tribute to Gustav Tammann.

With this data release, the VISTA VVV survey (179.B-2002) publishes the VVV near-infrared Astrometric Catalogue (called VIRAC). This contains proper motions of stars measured during five years of observations (from 2010 to 2015). The catalogue contains ZYJHKs band-merged magnitudes (single epoch, wherein the Ks magnitude is a mean value) and proper motion measurements for 312 587 642 unique sources detected in the multi-epoch imaging campaign covering 560 deg² of the Milky Way bulge and southern disc. VIRAC includes 119 million high quality proper motion measurements, out of which 47 million have statistical uncertainties below 1 milliarcsecond yr^-1. The VIRAC photometric calibration and astrometric reference frame are both derived from the 2MASS Point Source Catalogue.

The ESPRESSO 4-UT mode is a new capability offered at the VLT. The commissioning of this instrument mode is nearing completion, and an integral part of this process is Science Verification (SV). SV programmes include a set of typical scientific observations that should verify and demonstrate to the community the capabilities of the new instrument in the operational framework of the VLT Observatory. ESO encourages the community to submit highly challenging or risky science observations that will push ESPRESSO in 4-UT mode to its limits in order to better understand the performance parameter space and its constraints.

The Offices for Science and the Astronomy Faculty are very pleased to present the 2019 ESO Fellows. Here is an introduction to the Fellows due to start in Garching, Germany later this year.

The Offices for Science and the Astronomy Faculty are very pleased to present the 2019 ESO Fellows. Here is an introduction to the Fellows due to start in Chile later this year.

The ESO Annual Report 2018 is now available. It presents a summary of ESO’s activities throughout the year, outlining progress on the design, construction and operation of ground-based astronomical facilities, as well as various initiatives to promote and organise astronomical research.

The ESO Public Survey ATLAS with VST (ESO programme ID: 177.A-3011; PI: Tom Shanks) is targeting 4700 square degrees of the southern sky in u,g,r,i and z bands to depths comparable to those of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS (r ~ 22). Its wide wavelength coverage, from the u to z band, complements the VISTA, VHS and VIKING Surveys in YJHK bands. This fourth data release (DR4) provides new stacked reduced images and associated source lists for the period Oct 2014 to July 2017 and reprocessed stacked reduced images, associated source lists and the band-merged catalogue from the beginning of observations in August 2011 to July 2017. DR4 data contain a global photometric calibration based on Gaia. The basic data reduction of the VST imaging was carried out at the Cambridge Astronomical Surveys Unit (CASU), while the band-merged catalogue was produced by the Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) at Edinburgh.