After a very successful start of commissioning in November 2012, KMOS officially began scientific operations this month. KMOS is an integrated-field-unit (24 sub-fields), medium-resolution (R~3000–4000) spectrograph covering the 0.8–2.5 micron region of the spectrum.

Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars are a class of early-type pre-main sequence objects whose stellar mass corresponds to the transition regime between Solar-type stars and high-mass stars. They are generally bright at most wavelengths allowing a detailed view of their evolving environment and are pivotal objects for the formation of both stars and planets. The high-resolution observational and theoretical advances of the past 10 to 15 years provide the primary motivation and the evolution of the circumstellar disc material constitutes the main, but not the exclusive topic, for the workshop. Areas to be addressed include circumstellar disc structure, transition and debris discs, disc dispersal, jets and outflows, young clusters and the impact of future instrumentation.

Exoplanet research is one of the major science drivers for the future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This community workshop will explore the science cases and the planned capabilities of the E-ELT in the field of exoplanet research. The aim is to provide a synthesis of the goals to be achieved by the E-ELT with its planned instrumentation in the field of exoplanets and the most relevant issues in exoplanet science for the next decade. Topics to be discussed include: initial conditions for planet formation; planetary populations determined from detection surveys; characterisation through resolved imaging and direct and transit spectroscopy and the search for habitable planets.

The ALMA Early Science Cycle 2 Call for Proposals has been issued. The full Call and all the information and tools relevant for proposal preparation are available through the ALMA Science Portal. The proposal deadline is 5 December 2013 with the start of Cycle 2 observations expected in June 2014. Cycle 1 high priority projects that remain uncompleted at that time will be transferred into Cycle 2 upon PI approval; see the status report for details.

The science results coming from ESO's facilities are not just of interest to the astronomical community, but also to the public at large. ESO's education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD) is always pleased to hear about new results that might make ESO science press releases. Such releases not only give your results wider coverage — often in national newspapers and broadcast media all around the world — but also raise public awareness of ESO itself and its achievements. ePOD can help with preparing an engaging text as well as impressive visuals, images and videos, to enhance the impact.

In a collaboration between the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA, Nice) and ESO, stellar radial velocities, and atmospheric parameters, including effective temperature, surface gravity, mean metallicity and enrichment in alpha-elements, have been obtained by analyzing 21551 FEROS spectra from the Science Archive Facility with the MATISSE parameterisation algorithm. A dedicated web interface allows these data to be browsed, searched and downloaded. Associated data documentation can be consulted for more details.

The Science Archive Facility now provides community access to the first data products from the VST public survey projects. Following a year and a half of successful scientific operations, the VST public surveys have returned nearly 1.5 TB of reduced data products, which can be queried for and downloaded via dedicated query interfaces.

ESO has a prominent fellowship programme in both Garching (Germany) and Santiago (Chile), with a yearly application deadline. The goal of these fellowships is to offer outstanding early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their independent research programmes in an exciting scientific environment with close contact to the activities and staff at ESO.

A new version of ACE, the Access Control at ESO, has been released. This tool enables successful ESO proposal PIs to delegate and share with their collaborators access to the Phase 2 observation preparation, retrieval of proprietary data from the Science Archive and delegation for the Phase 3 data products submission.

Staff vacancies for the senior position of Director for Science, based in Garching, and for an operations astronomer at Paranal to support VLTI have been opened. The deadlines are 8 September and 31 August 2013, respectively. ESO Fellowships are also open for application with a deadline of 15 October 2013. Full details can be found on the ESO Recruitment Portal.