European
Southern
Observatory
ESO Science Newsletter March 2022
30 Mar 2022

This newsletter is a summary of recent ESO Science Announcement items. Follow the links or visit ESO Science Announcements to read more.



Science Announcements


2022 Release of VLT/VLTI Instrument Data Reduction Software Packages

28 Mar 2022:

The annual public release of ESO VLT/VLTI instruments data reduction software packages is scheduled for end of May 2022. Please note that the new pipeline packages will be released for the following operating systems: Fedora 33, 34, 35; Scientific Linux 7; CentOS 7; macOS 10.15, 11 and 12

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ALMA Cycle 9 Call for Proposals

28 Mar 2022:

The ALMA Director, on behalf of the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and the partner organisations in East Asia, Europe, and North America, is pleased to announce the ALMA Cycle 9 Call for Proposals (CfP) for scientific observations to be scheduled from October 2022 to September 2023. Proposal submission opened at 24 March 2022, 15:00 UT and the submission deadline is 21 April 2022, 15:00 UT. More information can be found on the ALMA Science Portal.

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ESO Period 110 Proposal Submission Statistics

28 Mar 2022:

The deadline for proposal submission for Period 110 (1 October 2022 - 31 March 2023) was 25 March, 2022. 871 valid proposals were submitted, including 33 Large Programmes. On the VLT the most requested ESO instrument was MUSE with a request of 449 nights, followed by X-Shooter with 258 nights. HARPS on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope was the most demanded instrument at La Silla (and fourth most demanded instrument overall), with 184 nights.

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La Silla Paranal Observatory Welcomes Back Visiting Astronomers

24 Mar 2022:

Following an incremental ramp-up plan, La Silla Paranal Observatory has been supporting science operations for all telescopes and systems over the past months. As of March 29, the Observatory moves one more step ahead, to the ‘Full Operations’ mode. This step lifts several of the limitations that have been present since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, while still maintaining a basic set of sanitary restrictions on site. For science users the most important change is that as of June 2022 the observatory will again welcome visiting astronomers on site.

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The Messenger 186 is Now Available

24 Mar 2022:

The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. In this Issue 186 readers will find an article about the ongoing search for quiescent black holes, which has detected stripped stars instead. The issue continues with an overview of the ALMACAL project, describing this survey based on ALMA calibrator observations. Further, readers will be able to learn more about the processes that drive the evolution of isolated magnetic white dwarfs.

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SciOps 2022: Artificial Intelligence for Science and Operations in Astronomy

22 Mar 2022:

The next Science Operations workshop, SciOps 2022, is dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for science and operations in Astronomy and will take place in hybrid format on 16-20 May 2022 at the ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München and online. Building on the success of the previous series of similar events, this ESO/ESA workshop aims to facilitate the exchange of current developments and applications of AI-enabled technologies in science operations for space- and ground-based astronomical facilities.

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CUBES Agreement Signature

18 Mar 2022:

On January 31 2022 the ESO Director General signed the agreement for the design and construction of the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES), a very efficient, intermediate resolution spectrograph, that covers the UV region close to the atmospheric cutoff. The agreement was signed with Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), representing the consortium including INAF (Italy), the Science and Technology Facilities Council - UK Astronomy Technology Centre and Durham University (United Kingdom), Landessternwarte Heideberg (Germany), Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomy Center (Poland) and Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas-Universidade de São Paulo and Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (Brazil).

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2022 Users Committee Meeting and Poll

14 Mar 2022:

The Users Committee (UC) represents ESO's astronomical community at large and acts as an advisory body to the ESO Director General on matters related to the performance, scientific access, operation and user interfaces to the La Silla Paranal Observatory and ALMA. The annual meeting of the UC is scheduled on 28 and 29 April 2022. During the UC meeting updates from ESO and feedback from the user community are exchanged and openly discussed. Each year one topic is explored in more detail and this year the Special Topic session is dedicated to future of Visitor Mode and remote participation in observations. The UC welcomes input, opinions and suggestions from the community either through direct contact with the UC members or through the Poll designed by the UC.

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Second Data Release from the VISTA Cycle 2 ESO Public Survey VISIONS

10 Mar 2022:

VISIONS (programme id 198.C-2009, PI J. Alves) is a Near-Infrared ESO second cycle VISTA Public Survey which covers all major nearby star-forming regions accessible from the southern hemisphere. This imaging survey is designed to deliver deep high-sensitivity observations of areas with large amounts of extinction. It includes also control fields which sample the predominant stellar populations in largely extinction-free regions and multiple epochs imaging data over large areas surrounding the targeted star-forming regions to enable the computation of proper motions for sources inaccessible to Gaia.

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ELT Instrument News: HIRES is now ANDES; MOSAIC Also Moving Forward

10 Mar 2022:

ANDES is the new name for the high-resolution spectrograph, formerly known as HIRES, for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Another instrument dubbed HIRES is successfully operating on the Keck telescope, so it was decided to rename the ELT spectrograph. Through an open process, the consortium — in consultation with the ESO follow-up team — has decided on "ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph", or ANDES. The official start of both ANDES and MOSAIC as two more ELT instrument projects was approved by the ESO Council in December last year.

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Conference: Solar System with the ELTs

01 Mar 2022:

The Solar System Science with the ELTs conference will focus on ESO’s ELT unique capabilities to address the open questions in the diverse subfields of Solar System science. Special emphasis will be put on how the ELT, alongside with the GMT and TMT, will fit in the rich landscape of ground- and space-based telescopes, in particular with the current and future ESA missions.

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Upcoming ESO or ESO-related workshops
 

Chilean based observatories have been leading the scientific research in several astronomical areas. This forum is organized around the highest impact science results in the last few years. We will show how these different observatories contributed to major advances in Astrophysics and we will put emphasis on the scientific involvement of the astronomers working at those observatories on those high impact results.

"Solar System Science with the ELTs" will focus on ESO’s ELT unique capabilities to address the open questions in the diverse subfields of Solar System science. A special emphasis will be put on how the ELT, alongside with the GMT and TMT will fit in the rich landscape of ground- and space-based telescopes, in particular with the current and future ESA missions. The conference will consist of two parts. In the first, technical session scheduled for April 28, 2022, ELT instrument experts will present the capabilities of the instruments for Solar System observations. The speakers will be encouraged to use the conference materials to develop further their ideas of the specific contribution of the ELTs to their field of research. These ideas, alongside with talks reviewing the state of the art knowledge in the different subfields of planetary science, will then be presented during the main part of the conference taking place from June 13-15, 2022.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together the galactic, extragalactic, and high-redshift communities, both theorists and observers, with the final goal of fostering fruitful discussions and new collaborations on the formation of the central regions of galaxies. Amongst the main topics to be discussed are: Chemo-dynamical properties of the MW bulge, observed properties of bulges and link to formation scenarios, bulges in a cosmological context, clumpy discs, mergers and bulge formation at high redshifts, and formation and evolution of bulges from a theoretical perspective. The meeting is intended to be highly participative, with substantial time devoted to discussions to promote cross-disciplinary interactions and exchange of ideas. This ESO Workshop should set the basis for the study of galaxy bulges in the new decade.

The primary goal of this workshop is to discuss the relevance of reproducible workflows in astronomy and potential pathways for the astronomical community. As part of the workshop, examples will be shared of reproducible work as well as tools and techniques for improving reproducibility and for mining astronomical data. Also discussed will be community guides, tools and white papers related to data sharing, reproducible workflows, data mining and big-data problems. This will include making recommendations for hiring and funding bodies that will aim to encourage open approaches and retain expertise in the astronomical community. Groups will be organised to continue this work after the workshop is concluded to widen community participation.

Technologies associated with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data science, deep learning, and neural networks  are already embedded in our daily lives. Also astronomical research is deeply impacted by the advances of AI technologies. The large amount and complexity of data produced by modern astronomical facilities require AI based technologies to allow efficient processing, and novel, synoptical, analysis and discovery methods. They add value to both engineering, observatory  operations and science, with the final goal to enhance data exploitation. Building on the success of the previous series of similar events, this ESO/ESA workshop aims to facilitate the exchange of current developments and applications of AI enabled technologies in science operations for space- and ground-based astronomical facilities. The entire scientific operations workflow starting from proposal and observation preparation, scheduling and execution of observing programs, data analysis and archiving will be examined.