Following the successful publication of the data products from the VISTA public surveys (VVV, VIDEO, VMC, VHS) on 01.12.2011 (see announcement), the first data release from the ULTRAVISTA survey is now added to the list. The release consists of about ~ 87 GB high quality data products including the deep images in YJHKs broad bands and the NB118 image at the position of the COSMOS field, plus the single bands and multi-color catalogs.

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a 2.6-m wide field optical survey telescope for the southern hemisphere located on the VLT platform at Cerro Paranal, Chile. It is equipped with just one focal plane instrument, OmegaCAM, a large format (16k x16k pixels) CCD camera built by an international consortium. It operates in the u,g,r,i,z SDSS bands, covering a corrected field of view of 1°x 1°.

The ESO Science Archive Facility now provides community access to the first data products from the VISTA public survey projects. Following one year and a half of successful scientific operations VISTA telescope, the VISTA public surveys have returned nearly 6 TB of reduced data products, which can be queried for and downloaded by the international community via a dedicated query interface at the ESO Science Archive Facility.

With the deployment of the CalSelector service, the generation of PIPack is discontinued as of November 4th, 2011. PI Packs created before that date will remain available online from the PI Packages service, but will not be updated anymore (also, please note that PIPacks created between October 1st and November 4th, 2011 only contain raw data).

CalSelector is a new archive service that, starting from the results of a query for raw science files, groups together the raw science files that need to be calibrated together (e.g. an infrared jitter sequence) and associates and returns all the raw and static calibrations needed to process the raw science files. Excerpts from the relevant Night Logs and an xml representation of the calibration cascade are added as ancillary files to the request, as well. The set of raw and static calibrations needed to process the raw science files is defined by the calibration plan of that instrument and instrument mode. The calibration plans are distributed as part of the instrument documentation (http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/instrumentName/doc, e.g. http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/hawki/doc).

From 2012 the ESO Science Archive Facility will cease distribution of data using optical disc media.

A new coronagraphic Apodizing Phase Plate (APP) has been placed since Period 86, in a pupil plane on NaCo and designed to work in the 3 to 5 micron range. APP Imaging is offered with either the narrow-band filter NB_4.05 or the broad band filter L_prime. It allows direct imaging (no mask) with an improved companion detection limit between 0.2 and 0.7” on one side of the PSF.

An alternative method for handling ESO Archive Requests for data and performing the instant download of data through a Download Manager is now available with full documentation provided in an Archive User Manual and in the FAQ. The new features are still subject to maintenance and are deployed in parallel to the existing user services for ftp retrieval and media delivery. Long term the Download Manager is planned to replace the ftp service and from now on already provides functionality to support the on-line PI-Pack service.

Phase 3 denotes the process in which principal investigators of ESO observing programmes return their reduced data products to ESO for storage in the ESO archive and subsequent data publication to the scientific community. Phase 3 is mandatory for ESO Public Surveys and for ESO Large Programmes since period 75.

A new query form has been released that provides access to pipeline processed HARPS (since October 2003) and FEROS (since April 2005) data.