The latest ALMA Status Report, available here, includes Cycle 2 Early Science observing progress (including Cycle 1 Transfer projects), project completion and data delivery summary, Extension and Optimization of Capabilities (EOC) activity, and preparations for Cycle 4, since the last Report (November 2014).
The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 97 (1 April - 30 September 2016) 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 1 October 2015.
The User Support Department (USD) invites principal investigators and their Phase 2 delegates to participate in a user feedback campaign. The survey is designed to provide USD with the opinions of the science community on a number of services, in particular related to service mode observation preparations, execution and follow-up. As such it is an important way for ESO and the USD to know where we are doing well, and where there is room for improvement.
ESO welcomes applications from qualified researchers wishing to conduct their frontier research at ESO with the support of one of the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grants in the Starting Grant category. EU ERC eligibility criteria apply and specific restrictions are applicable to the submission of ERC proposals. More details can be found here.
ESO has started to distribute the instrument data reduction pipelines as RPM packages. Following the release in April 2015 of pipelines with MacPorts, RPM packages are now available for Linux users. RPM and MacPorts distributions should make the installation of pipeline software easier and less prone to errors.
As announced in February 2015, the FLAMESGIRAFFE focusing procedure has been updated, resulting in significant improvement to the spectral resolution of the instrument. The spectral resolution characterisation has been completed for all grating settings and the new resolving powers are listed under the FLAMES News.