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

A Chandra image release was issued on Dec 13 describing observations of the galaxy cluster, Abell 2052. The hot gas in Abell 2052 is being sloshed back and forth like wine in a glass. The sloshing was set in motion when a small cluster smashed into the larger central one. Sloshing of hot gas like this can affect how the giant elliptical galaxy and its supermassive black hole at the center grow. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2011/a2052/

Of note this week was the release on Dec 15 of the Cycle 14 Call for Proposals. The proposal submission deadline is 15 March 2012. In conjunction with the call was the release of the CIAO 4.4 analysis software system together with CALDB 4.4.7. The release includes several tool enhancements/updates, Sherpa PSF handling updates, and optimization improvements. For details see: http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/releasenotes/ciao_4.4_release.html

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of NGC 891 ULX1, which was accepted as Director's Discretionary Time TOO on Dec 5.