Representatives of the United Kingdom and Denmark have confirmed that their countries will participate in the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) programme. Twelve ESO Member States have now joined the E-ELT programme.

Construction of the E-ELT is expected to start later in 2013, with first light to come early in the next decade.

MIDI has recently been commissioned with the PRIMA Fringe Sensor Unit FSU-A as an external fringe tracker, enabling improved sensitivities. This mode has been offered from Period 91 for use with the Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) in Visitor Mode. PRIMA+FSU-A enables increased visibilities, for feeble disc emission from young stars for example, with factors 5–10 times in sensitivity improvement (down to 50 mJy limit) over classical MIDI stand-alone operation modes.

The application deadline for Period 92 (October 2013–March 2014) closed on 27 March and a total of 892 proposals were received. There were 869 proposals for Normal Programmes, 21 for Large Programmes and two for Calibration Programmes. Of the proposals for Large Programmes, nine were for Paranal, eight were for La Silla telescopes and five were for APEX.

The KMOS near-infrared multi-object integral field spectrometer underwent commissioning runs in November/December 2012 and in January and March 2013. It is being prepared for service and visitor mode observations in Period 92 (October 2013–March 2014). A brief description of first light and commissioning can be found here, and some of the commissioning raw data can be accessed, although no reduction pipeline is yet available.

ALMA data can now be accessed through the ALMA Science Portal.  Public data, i.e. currently Cycle 0 data that are out of the 12 month proprietary period, can be accessed anonymously.

The Phase 3 validator has been expanded and is now ready to verify VST OmegaCAM DR1 data. The changes are fully described on the Phase 3 web pages.

The PIs of the VST Public Surveys and their teams can now test their data products against the ESO Science Data Products Standard (Issue 5, 11.01.2013).

As of ESO Observing Period 91, the ESO Science Archive Facility (SAF) is the sole access point for data obtained with ESO telescopes. This includes access to proprietary data for both Visitor and Service Mode runs.

The ESO research studentship programme provides an outstanding opportunity for Ph.D. students to experience the exciting scientific environment at one of the world's leading observatories for a period of up to two years.

Science verification of the X-shooter data products for SLIT mode observations has been completed. Issues with the data products, such as the noise model, bad pixel propagation and interpolation, and flux calibration, were found and a new improved version of the pipeline has been released and can be downloaded.

Improved flux standards and a more detailed pipeline tutorial will be released in the second quarter of 2013.

On 13 March 2013 from 11:30–13:00 CLST (15:30–17:00 CET), the official inauguration of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) will take place at the observatory’s Operations Support Facility (OSF) at the Chajnantor Plateau, in the Chilean Andes.