This site is intended to summarize the most relevant details of the annual meetings of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Users Committee (UC), one of the governing bodies of ESO.

• On an annual basis we ask users for feedback through our User Committee Poll. This year’s poll 2020 was focused on Time Domain Astrophysics. The outcome of the poll for the Spanish community is now available in this document.
• Last ESO and ESO-ALMA Users Committee meeting number 44 took place via videoconference on 29-30 April 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
• All astronomers are kindly requested to check the new procedure for recruiting Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) and Panel members, and are kindly asked to contact Nicolas Lodieu or Esther Calle (RIA, calle at ifca.unican.es) for registering as eligible OPC and Panel members.

During 2020-2023, the Spanish representative is Nicolas Lodieu (IAC, Tenerife). You may contact him for any inquiry related to the ESO UC. Other national representatives of the ESO UC in 2019 are listed here.

Role of the ESO UC.

The ESO Users Committee (UC) is established as an advisory body to the ESO Director General (DG) in representation of the communities of users of the ESO Member States and Chile. The UC shall advise the DG on matters pertaining to the performance, scientific access, operations and data management facilities of the La Silla Paranal Observatory and ALMA. The complete list of the ESO UC’s competencies is provided in this pdf document approved by the ESO Council in December 10, 2010. One new task is the creation of the list of OPC and Panels members nominees (see OPC and Panel members recruitment page).