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.

As you have probably noticed, the DSS batch tool was out of service for some time.

This was due to architectural changes in the ESO infrastructure, meant to solve some vulnerability issues discovered during the summer 2012. Now that the security of the ESO infrastructure has been improved, the service has been restablished.

Please be aware that some changes were needed in the software configuration; hence, to make it to work, you have either to install the dss client again (see install instructions), or you can simply apply the patch described here.

To support the VST Public Surveys in their Phase 3 preparation, the format standard for data products to be submitted via Phase 3 has been expanded and now includes OmegaCAM data products. Please refer to: Issue 5, Date 11/01/2013.

The Ultra-VISTA survey, targeting a sub-area of the COSMOS field, represents the deepest of the six near-infrared ESO public imaging surveys, which are currently being executed at ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The first release of the new infrared source catalogue in the COSMOS field is now accessible from the ESO Science Archive Facility through a new powerful user interface for querying and data download.

To support ESO spectroscopic surveys in their Phase 3 preparations the format standard for data products to be submitted via Phase 3 has been expanded and now includes spectroscopic data, i.e. extracted, calibrated, and fully characterized one-dimensional spectra.

The new ESO Science Data Products Standard (Issue 4, Date 15/10/2012) is based on the standard definitions, which were previously published in the External Data Products Standard, Issue 3 (25/05/2012). Note that the data format standard for VISTA public survey products (images and catalogues) remains unchanged, meaning that issue 3 still may be used for the preparation of these data.

As the scope of the new standard was enlarged to science data products in general, the document title has been adjusted accordingly. External data providers are not affected by this modification.

ESO Science Data Products Standard (Issue 4, Date 15/10/2012)

As part of the ongoing effort of enabling access to historical ESO data, raw frames from the FEROS instrument taken between 2001-09-01 and 2003-10-15 have been recovered from offline media. These data are now available through the standard Archive query form.

The APEX query form now allows PIs and their delegates to download proprietary processed data. These data products are now transferred over the network, allowing PI's to access their data within a few weeks after they have been taken. It is expected that this lag will be reduced to a few days in the foreseeable future.

In addition to historical and public pipeline-processed data, the FEROS/HARPS query form now allows PIs and their delegates to query and download proprietary processed data.

At the end of 2010 the previous operator of the European Hubble Space Telescope Archive, the ST-ECF closed its doors. (see http://www.stecf.org/)