The Scientific Return of VLT Programmes

We utilise ESO-internal databases that collect information from Phase 1 (proposal submission) and Phase 2 (observation preparation and execution). Some of these databases were set up before the start of VLT operations, and over time, several modifications have been introduced to improve consistency and completeness. Among other studies, these databases enable the analysis of operational metrics and efficiency, which have been presented in Primas et al. (2014). We extracted the following information from the databases: scheduled observing proposal with its associated unique programme identification (ID, e.g., 089.A-0118), telescope, instrument, observing mode (VM or SM) and allocated time (nights for VM and hours for SM).