Friday 6 January 2006 9.00am EST
| Happy New Year from the Chandra team.
During the last two weeks the observing schedule was replanned to include a follow-up observation of GRB 051221 that was accepted as a 1 day turn-around Target Of Opportunity (TOO) on Dec 21. Loads were replanned and uplinked on Jan 4. An observation of NGC 1893 was impacted by the TOO and will be rescheduled in a later load. Preparations were completed this week for the 2006 winter eclipse season consisting of 5 medium eclipses starting on Jan 6. A real-time procedure was performed on Jan 5 to execute SCS 29 in preparation for the first eclipse. Of note this week was the completion of the 1-month soak period for the Linux version of the ground system. All criteria were met for a successful soak period and the old Silicon Graphics hardware will be taken out of backup configuration and then decommissioned at the end of January. A Chandra press release was issued on Dec 28 describing an unusual observation that scanned the northern polar region of Earth. The results show that the aurora borealis, or "northern lights", also dance in X-ray light, creating changing bright arcs of X-ray energy above the Earth's surface. For further details see: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/05_releases/press_122805.html The schedule of targets for next week is shown below and includes a series of calibration observations of Capella and Vega. |
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Radiation Belts Jan 8 N132D ACIS-S Jan 9 Q2237+0305 ACIS-S GRB051221 ACIS-S Capella (5 obs) HRC-I Jan 10 N132D ACIS-S 3C227 ACIS-S Radiation Belts Jan 11 UGC 4881 ACIS-S NGC2552 ACIS-S Jan 12 Polaris ACIS-I cl0355-3741 ACIS-I 3C 442A ACIS-I HDE 245059 ACIS-S/HETG Jan 13 Radiation Belts Vega ACIS-I Jan 14 Vega ACIS-S Vega HRC-I Vega (4 obs) HRC-S cl0340-2823 ACIS-I Betelgeuse HRC-S Jan 15 3C227 ACIS-S N132D ACIS-S
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All spacecraft subsystems continued to support nominal operations.
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Revised: July 08, 2022