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

Chandra passed through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth eclipses of the season on Apr 27 and 30 and May 2 respectively, with nominal power and thermal performance. A real-time procedure was executed on May 1 to set the short eclipse flag to "true" in preparation for the final three eclipses of the season.

A real-time procedure was executed on May 2 to perform a routine self-check of the Electrical Interface Assembly (EIA) Sequencer.

A Chandra press release was issued on Apr 30 as a NASA press release describing observations of an outburst of X-rays from a black hole in the galaxy M83. The X-ray output from the black hole increased by about 3,000 times. This discovery suggests that there may be a population of older, volatile stellar-mass black holes. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/12_releases/press_043012.html

A Chandra press release was issued on May 3 as a NASA press release describing evidence that a star that wandered too close to a supermassive black hole was ripped apart. This discovery was made using NASA's GALEX telescope and the Pan-STARRS1 observatory in Hawaii. The galaxy where this violent act occurred is called PS1-10jh and is located about 2.7 billion light years from Earth. Researchers used Chandra data to rule out a competing theory of an active galactic nucleus. For details see: http://chandra.si.edu/press/12_releases/press_050312.html

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes observations of Sgr A* coordinated with several ground-based observatories.