During the last week observing schedule was replanned to incorporate an observation of VW Hyi, which was accepted as a Director's Discretionary Time Target of Opportunity on Aug 5. A scheduled observation of NGC7212 was impacted by the replan and will be rescheduled in a future week.

A Chandra press release was issued on Aug 9 describing two new separate studies using the Chandra COSMOS-Legacy survey data and other Chandra data. These studies have independently collected samples of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs). IMBHs may be able to explain how the very biggest black holes, the supermassive ones, were able to form so quickly after the Big Bang. One leading explanation is that supermassive black holes grow over time from smaller black holes "seeds" containing about a hundred times the Sun's mass. Some of these seeds should merge to form IMBHs. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/18_releases/press_080918.html

Of note this week was the Chandra science workshop on "Accretion in Stellar Systems" held in Cambridge MA, Aug 8-10.

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of HD 93129A, which was accepted as a Target of Opportunity on May 24 and is coordinated with NuStar, and an observation of SN2018bsz a follow-up to a Target of Opportunity accepted on May 31.