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

On Jul 23, we celebrated the 26th anniversary of Chandra's launch and 26 years of successful scientific operations. The spacecraft and instruments continue to operate superbly well and we look forward with excitement to the coming year of science discovery!

A Chandra press release was issued on Jul 24 describing observations of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). With a combination of Chandra and HST data, NGC 6099 HLX-1 was identified in a compact star cluster at the outskirts of the elliptical galaxy NGC 6099. First seen in Chandra data in 2009, the source brightened to a maximum in 2012 and then continued fading, showing behavior consistent with that of an IMBH accreting material from a star in a tidal disruption event. IMBHs have masses between those of stellar-mass black holes, less than about 100 times the mass of the Sun, and the supermassive black holes generally located at the centers of galaxies, with masses millions or billions that of the Sun. IMBHs have the potential to shed light on the formation process of supermassive black holes. For details, see https://chandra.harvard.edu/press/25_releases/press_072425.html

A Chandra image release was issued on Jul 23 with a collection of images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s extensive archive. The compilation combines data from Chandra and from other NASA missions, including JWST and HST, as well as ground-based optical and radio telescopes, and includes objects ranging from star-forming regions within our Galaxy to distant external galaxies. For details, see https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2025/cosmic/

The schedule of targets for the next week is shown below and includes an observation of MAXIJ1820+070 coordinated with VLA.