KMOS @ the VLT: Commissioning and Early Science

KMOS is a multi-object near-infrared integral field spectrograph built by a consortium of UK and German institutes for the ESO Paranal Observatory. KMOS completed commissioning at the ESO VLT in Spring 2013 and was made available to the user community from Oct 2013. We present the unique capabilities of KMOS for 3D galaxy surveys and report on the on-sky performance verification measured during three commissioning runs on the ESO VLT in 2012/13 and some of the early science results.