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.