We recently found an issue with the flux calibration of the XSHOOTER data products, for the blue (UVB) arm. The calibration is done with master response curves, which however show significant deviations (above the ±10% limit quoted in the release description) from the proper nightly response curves. This is true since about April 2015. There are also two sudden changes introducing a spectral artefact at λ=365nm, approximately the Balmer discontinuity, around dates 2015-07-30 and 2016-02-10.

Pipeline processed FEROS echelle data, covering the period November 2003 to the present, are now available as Science Data Products via the Phase 3 main and spectral query forms. The data consist of 1D spectra in the ESO/SDP format and the tar files containing output of the pipeline.

KiDS is one of the ESO Public Surveys carried out with OmegaCAM at the VST. Once complete, it will observe 1500 square degrees in four filters (u, g, r, i). Born to be a weak lensing shear tomography survey, it will also map the large-scale matter distribution in the universe and constrain the equation of state of Dark Energy. Its secondary science cases include galaxy evolution to Milky Way structure and from the detection of white dwarfs to high-redshift quasars.

KiDS is one of the ESO Public Surveys carried out with OmegaCAM at the VST. Once complete, it will observe 1500 square degrees in four filters (u, g, r, i). Born to be a weak lensing shear tomography survey, it will also map the large-scale matter distribution in the universe and constrain the equation of state of Dark Energy. Its secondary science cases include galaxy evolution to Milky Way structure and from the detection of white dwarfs to high-redshift quasars.

VIDEO is a deep near-infrared survey which targets ~12 square degrees over the ELAIS-S1, XMMLSS, and ECDFS extragalactic fields. VIDEO belongs to the suite of six public surveys being conducted at ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA).

The science 1-D spectra products from the HARPS observations of the ESO programme 096.C-0082, P.I. Guillem Anglada, from January to March 2016, are now available from the ESO Science Archive Facility. The results from the analysis of these spectra are published in the paper entitled “A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri”, by G. Anglada-Escudé et al., in Nature.

The LEGA-C ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey is now releasing science products from the first year of observations. LEGA-C started in December 2014 and observations are planned to be completed by mid 2018, with early data releases of the spectra and value-added products. More information on the survey design, sample selection, observing strategy, data reduction, are available at this link:http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ApJS..223...29V.

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.

A new data release of science products resulting from the ESO/VST Public Survey VPHAS+ is now available via the dedicated Phase 3 query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

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 program 'Quasars and their absorption lines: a legacy survey of the high-redshift universe with VLT/XSHOOTER', lead by PI Sebastien Lopez (program code 189.A-0424). This data set represents the largest spectroscopic survey of high-redshift QSOs with simultaneous rest-frame UV/optical coverage to date, thus enabling a wide range of research topics including the intergalactic medium, active galactic nuclei and cosmological studies.