Number 441 (Story #1), July 30, 1999 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein THE CHANDRA X-RAY TELESCOPE is now installed in its highly elliptical orbit, where the Earth itself, and not just its atmosphere, will not interfere with x-ray reception. Named for astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekher, the 14-m-long telescope is considered one of NASA's three "great observatories"; the other telescopes in this battleship class are the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Chandra will have superb angular resolution (half an arc-second, 8 times better than previous x-ray telescopes), sensitivity to faint objects (20 times better), and spectral resolution (1 eV). The object of the mission is unflinchingly to explore graphic violence wherever it can be found at x-ray wavelengths: quasars, black holes, pulsars, supernovas, and intergalactic plasmas. (http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/background/facts/cxoquick.htm)