Data products resulting from the first release of the ESO/VST Public Survey VPHAS+ are now available via the dedicated Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

This data release covers the first 9 months of data-taking in which a tenth of the survey footprint was observed to desired quality. These first pointings have favoured the Galactic equator and some well-known open clusters of interest to the Gaia-ESO Survey. Reduced images and unstacked single-band source lists are provided. The total data volume of this data release is 749 GB.

Following the news of the 3rd of April, the media production service is now re-enabled. It is accessible via the dataportal facility which the user can reach after submitting a request using the "Request marked datasets" button. It now allows users to either instantaneously download the data they requested or request for their data to be copied onto a USB disk. The latter option is only available for requests totaling more than 400 GB. The USB disks are expected to be sent back to ESO within 2 weeks after reception.

Stellar radial velocities, atmospheric parameters (effective temperature, surface gravity, mean metallicity [M/H]) and enrichment in alpha-elements ([alpha/Fe]) resulting from the automatic analysis of 21551 FEROS spectra from the ESO data archive with the MATISSE algorithm have been released. Go to the ESO Catalogue Facility(*) for data download and further information.

Data products resulting from ESO programme ID 60.A-­9284(H) as part of the first HAWK-­I science verification  are now available via the dedicated Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

This data release consists of a mosaic of four pointings in two filters J and Ks, with the center of the X-­ray luminous galaxy cluster XMMU J2235.3-­2557 imaged in the four extreme corners of the HAWK-I detector mosaic. The deep image covers 13' by 13' on the sky with a pixel scale of 0.1065''. The image quality varies from 0.3'' to 0.7'' depending on filter and location.

Data products resulting from the first release of the ESO/VST Public Survey KiDS are now available via the dedicated Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

The KMOS Science Verification (SV1) observations took place between June 24th and 30th 2013. The SV observations were being performed in Service Mode by a dedicated team. The resulting raw data are immediately accessible to the whole community via the ESO Science Archive Facility . The calibrations needed to process the data can be associated to the science data themselves by selecting the CalSelector option.

The ESO Science Archive Facility provides access to new data products resulting from the VISTA public survey projects. Largely complementing the first release of VISTA public survey data products from 2011, the VISTA public surveys have returned 6.2 TB of reduced data products, which can be queried for and downloaded by the international community via dedicated query interfaces at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

The survey programmes on the near-infrared 4-metre Visual and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) are a suite of well-coordinated and challenging scientific projects that range from pencil beam ­deep observations of extragalactic fields - to whole hemisphere surveys. A summary of their scientific goals and observing strategies is available at the following URL:

KMOS commissioning data were taken in late November- early December 2012 and in late January-early Februrary 2013. The spectrum of an emission line star (Hip 022112), a mosaic of separate IFU pointings of Jupiter, images of the integral field data of several galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) and some images from the mosaic of IFU pointings centred on Radcliffe 136 (R136) in 30 Doradus were among the data taken in the earlier commissioning run. Images of these data appear in Sharples, R. et al., 2012, The Messenger, 151, 21 . The raw data associated with these images and spectra are made available here together with the available calibration data.

Starting as of Period 91 (and covering also observations carried over to period 91 and subsequent), the proprietary period of all science and acquisition files is counted from the moment the files can be accessed and downloaded from the ESO Science Archive, i.e. both data and metadata have arrived in the ESO Science Archive in Garching. The release date of any affected file is set to the date of that event (successful reception) plus "the proprietary period" (typically one year), and the proprietary countdown begins.

As announced in the news of the 24 March 2011, the ftp service in the context of archive requests is now to be discontinued.