During the last week Chandra completed the observing schedule as planned.

Chandra passed through the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first eclipses of the season on Sep 22, 25, and 27 respectively, with nominal power and thermal performance.

A real-time procedure was executed on Sep 27 to update the on-board ephemeris.

A Chandra press release was issued on Sep 24 as a NASA press release describing Chandra observations that have provided evidence that our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded in an enormous halo of hot gas that extends for hundreds of thousands of light years. The mass of the halo is estimated to be comparable to the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it could be the solution to the "missing-baryon" problem for the Galaxy. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/12_releases/press_092412.html

Of note this week was the release on Sep 27 of CALDB 4.5.2. This update includes ACIS time-dependent gain corrections for the period May-July 2012, as well as corrections to the eighteen ACIS Group E blank-sky background files. For details see: http://cxc.harvard.edu/caldb/downloads/Release_notes/CALDB_v4.5.2.html

Also of note this week was the Chandra Quarterly Review conducted on Sep 25 in Cambridge.

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of MAXI J0556-332, which is a follow-up to a Target of Opportunity accepted on May 8, observations of the Orion Nebula Cluster and SDSS J140829.26+562823.5 coordinated with the EVLA, and an observation of Sgr A* coordinated with NuSTAR, Keck, VLT, SMA, CSO, CARMA, ALMA, EHT, HESS, and ATCA.