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Operations CXO Status Report

Friday 2 October 2015 9.00am EDT

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

An aspect camera dark current calibration was performed from the on-board loads on Sep 30. An assessment of the data indicates nominal aspect camera performance and that the number of CCD warm pixels shows a slight drop compared to the expected trend. This is consistent with CCD annealing during the recent safe mode dwell, but further measurements will be needed to rule out an unrelated fluctuation.

A Chandra press release was issued on Sep 28 announcing the appointment of Dr. Ralph Kraft, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Project Scientist for the Chandra High Resolution Camera (HRC), as the Principal Investigator (PI) for the science instrument. He succeeds the late Dr. Stephen Murray who was the instrument's original PI until his untimely death in August, 2015. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/15_releases/press_092815.html

A Chandra image release was issued on Sep 30 describing observations of the galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ2344-4243, nicknamed the Phoenix Cluster. The Phoenix Cluster holds several records for properties of a galaxy cluster. X-rays from Chandra reveal giant holes, or cavities, in the hot gas that pervades the cluster. Massive filaments of gas and dust surround the X-ray cavities and may play a role in the extreme star formation seen in the cluster. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/phoenix/

Of note this week was the release on Sep 30 of CXCDS 10.4.2.1 for standard processing, which includes updates to the Telemetry Database and to ACIS CC-mode grating data processing.

The schedule of targets for the next two weeks is shown below and includes observations of PHAT B6, PHAT B14, PHAT B15, PHAT B18, and PHAT B21 coordinated with NuSTAR, and of SDSS J1421+3752 coordinated with ground-based observatories.



------------------------------------------
        SPT-CLJ0313-5334       ACIS-I       Oct  5
        Radiation Belts
        LocalLeoColdCloud      ACIS-S       Oct  6
        Perseuscluster (4 obs) ACIS-I
        PHATB6                 ACIS-I
        SDSSJ1421+3752         ACIS-S       Oct  7
        NGC3293                ACIS-I
        Radiation Belts                     Oct  8
        PHATB14                ACIS-I
        PHATB21                ACIS-I       Oct  9
        2MASXJ05054575-23511   ACIS-S       Oct 10
        AHCep                  ACIS-I
        ChandraDeepField-S     ACIS-I
        Radiation Belts
        CygnusA-EHotspot       ACIS-I       Oct 11
        PHATB15                ACIS-I
        Mrk1044                ACIS-S       Oct 12
        SNR0453-669            ACIS-S
        CXOUJ171405.7-38103    ACIS-S       Oct 13
        Radiation Belts
        CygnusA-EHotspot       ACIS-I       Oct 14
        M31bulge               ACIS-I
        Mrk1044                ACIS-S
        2FGLJ0842.9-4721       ACIS-I       Oct 15
        LocalLeoColdCloud      ACIS-S
        CygnusA-EHotspot       ACIS-I
        SDSSJ010013.02+2802    ACIS-S       Oct 16
        Radiation Belts
        CygnusA-EHotspot       ACIS-I
        PHATB18                ACIS-I       Oct 17
        NLTT28469              ACIS-S
        2FGLJ1056.0-5853       ACIS-I       Oct 18
        Mrk1044                ACIS-S
        2XMMJ104608.7-59430    ACIS-S
        SDSSJ102839.11+4500    ACIS-S
        CygnusA-EHotspot       ACIS-I
        Radiation Belts

------------------------------------------

All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.

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