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

Of note this week was the release on Dec 16 of the Cycle 17 Call for Proposals. The proposal submission deadline is 17 March 2015. In conjunction with the call was the release of the CIAO 4.7 analysis software system, CALDB 4.6.5, and of CXCDS 10.3.2 for standard processing. The CIAO release includes several tool enhancements and updates. The CALDB release includes time-dependent ACIS gain files for Aug-Oct 2014, an update to the ACIS Grade file, corrected ACIS background files from 2009, the latest time-dependent HRC-I Gain Map, and updated HRC-S QE and QE-uniformity files. For details see: http://cxc.harvard.edu/ciao/releasenotes/ciao_4.7_release.html

A Chandra press release was issued on Dec 18 describing observations of XDCP J0044.0-2033, nicknamed the "Gioello" (Italian for "Jewel") Cluster. This newly discovered galaxy cluster is the most massive one ever detected with an age of 800 million years or younger, locating it about 9.6 billion light years from Earth. Using Chandra data, researchers were able to accurately determine the mass and other properties of this cluster. Results like this help astronomers understand how galaxy clusters have evolved over time. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/14_releases/press_121814.html

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below