Gaia
Gaia
Description
Gaia is a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) providing astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy of almost two billion stars in our Galaxy and beyond. This massive stellar census provides the basic observational data to tackle an enormous range of important problems related to the origin, structure, and evolutionary history of our Galaxy. For more information about Gaia, please visit ESA's website for the Gaia Scientific Community.
The gaia_dr3.gaia_source table has been crossmatched with all other datasets in Data Lab within a 1.5 arcsec radius, nearest neighbor only. These tables will appear with x1p5 in their name in our table browser. Example: gaia_dr3.x1p5__gaia_source__allwise__source.
Data Releases
Third Data Release (Gaia DR3)
Documentation for Gaia DR3 can be found on the Gaia Data Release 3 Papers page on their website.
| Gaia DR3 Summary | |
|---|---|
| Area covered | All Sky |
| Bands | G, GBP, GRP, GRVS |
| Number of Galaxy candidates / QSO candidates / total sources | 4,842,342 / 6,649,162 / 1,811,709,771 |
| Number of mean low-resolution BP/RP spectra | 220 million |
| Gaia DR3 Tables | |
|---|---|
| Table Name | Description |
| astrophysical_parameters | This is the main table containing the 1D astrophysical parameters produced by the Apsis processing chain developed in Gaia DPAC CU8. |
| gaia_source | This table has an entry for every Gaia observed source as published with this data release. It contains the basic source parameters, in their final state as processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium from the raw data coming from the spacecraft. The table is complemented with others containing information specific to certain kinds of objects (e.g. Solar–system objects, non–single stars, variables etc.) and value–added processing (e.g. astrophysical parameters etc.). |
| galaxy_candidates | This table contains parameters derived from various modules dedicated to the classification and characterisation of sources considered as galaxy candidates. This table has been constructed with the intention to be complete rather than pure and, as such, it will contain a large fraction of non-genuine extragalactic sources. |
| qso_candidates | This table contains parameters derived from various modules dedicated to the classification and characterisation of sources considered as QSO candidates. Together with those, the QSOs used to define the Gaia-CRF3 are also listed in this table. This table has been constructed with the intention to be complete rather than pure and, as such, it will contain a large fraction of non-genuine extragalactic sources. |
Early Data Release Three (Gaia EDR3)
Documentation for Gaia EDR3 can be found on the Gaia Early Data Release 3 Papers page on their website.
| Gaia EDR3 Summary | |
|---|---|
| Area covered | All Sky |
| Bands | G, GBP, GRP |
| Typical uncertainty of mean G-band photometry | 0.3mmag at G<13, 1mmag at G=17, 6mmag at G=20 |
| Typical uncertainty of mean GBP-band photometry | 0.9mmag at G<13, 12mmag at G=17, 108mmag at G=20 |
| Typical uncertainty of mean GRP-band photometry | 0.6mmag at G<13, 6mmag at G=17, 52mmag at G=20 |
| Total number of sources | 1,811,709,771 |
| Gaia EDR3 Tables | |
|---|---|
| Table Name | Description |
| agn_cross_id | This table lists sources whose positions and proper motions define the celestial reference frame of the Gaia catalogue (Gaia–CRF3). |
| commanded_scan_law | This table provides a representation of the Gaia scanning law over the 34 month time period covered by the Gaia Data Release 3 (from 2014-07-25 10:31:26 to 2017-05-28 08:46:29), including the Ecliptic Pole Scanning at the beginning of the mission. |
| frame_rotator_source | Sources used to compute the Gaia reference frame. |
| gaia_source | This table has an entry for every Gaia observed source as listed in the Main Database accumulating catalogue version from which the catalogue release has been generated. It contains the basic source parameters, that is only final data (no epoch data) and no spectra (neither final nor epoch). Documentation is available here. |
Second Data Release (Gaia DR2)
Documentation for Gaia DR2 can be found on the Gaia Data Release 2 Papers page on their website.
| Gaia DR2 Summary | |
|---|---|
| Area covered | All Sky |
| Bands | G, GBP, GRP |
| Typical uncertainty of mean G-band photometry | 0.3mmag at G<13, 2mmag at G=17, 10mmag at G=20 |
| Typical uncertainty of mean GBP- and GRP-band photometry | 2mmag at G<13, 10mmag at G=17, 200mmag at G=20 |
| Total number of sources | 1,692,919,135 |
| Gaia DR2 Tables | |
|---|---|
| Table Name | Description |
| cepheid | Cepheid stars |
| gaia_source | Primary object table |
| iers | IERS Gaia DR2 cross-identification |
| light_curves | Light-curve data |
| lpv | Long Period Variable stars |
| nsc_dr1 | 1.5-arcsec positional crossmatch against NSC DR1 |
| numtrans | Calibrated FoV transit photometry from CU5, consolidated and provided by CU7 for variable stars in Gaia DR2 (epoch_photometry, part 1) |
| rm | Rotation period in segment, part 1 (vari_rotation_modulation) |
| rmout | Rotation period in segment, part 3 (vari_rotation_modulation) |
| rmseg | Rotation period in segment, part 2 (vari_rotation_modulation) |
| rrlyrae | RR Lyrae stars (vari_rrlyrae) |
| rvstdcat | Mean radial velocities on absolute scale |
| rvstdmes | Original ground-based radial velocity measurements |
| shortts | Short-timescale sources (vari_short_timescale) |
| ssoobj | Data related to Solar System objects observed by Gaia (sso_source) |
| ssoobs | Solar System object observations (sso_observation) |
| ssoorb | Auxiliary information on asteroid orbits and basic photometric parameters (aux_sso_orbits) |
| ssores | Residuals with respect to an orbital fit considering only the Gaia observations (aux_sso_orbit_residuals) |
| transit | Calibrated FoV transit photometry for CU5, consolidated and provided by CU7 for variable stars in Gaia DR2 (epoch_photometry, part 2) |
| tsstat | Statistical parameters of time series, using only transits not rejected (vari_time_series_statistics) |
| varres | Variability classification results of all classifiers, identified by the classifierName column (vari_classifier_result) |
First Data Release (Gaia DR1)
Documentation for Gaia DR1 can be found on the Gaia Data Release 1 Papers page on their website.
| Gaia DR1 Summary | |
|---|---|
| Area covered | All Sky |
| Bands | G, GBP, GRP |
| Magnitude distribution percentiles | 11.2=0.135%, 14.5=2.275%, 17.1=15.866%, 19.0=50%, 20.1=84.134%, 20.7=97.725%, 21.0=99.865% |
| Number of sources with light curves | 3,194 |
| Number of sources | 1,142,679,769 |
| Gaia DR1 Tables | |
|---|---|
| Table Name | Description |
| cepheid | This table describes the Cepheid stars identified in table VariableSummary as classification=CEP. In the analyses only observations with rejectedByVariabilityProcessing=false are included, as found in table PhotVariableTimeSeriesGfov. |
| gaia_source | This table has an entry for every Gaia observed source as listed in the Main Database accumulating catalogue version from which the catalogue release has been generated. It contains the basic source parameters, that is only final data (no epoch data) and no spectra (neither final nor epoch). |
| phot_variable_time_series_gfov | FOV time series of sources that have phtoVariableFlag=VARIABLE. |
| phot_variable_time_series_gfov_statistical_parameters | Statistical parameter of FOV time series. |
| rrlyrae | This table describes the RRLyrae stars identified in table VariableSummary as classification=RRLYR. In the analyses only observations with rejectedByVariabilityProcessing=false are included, as found in table PhotVariableTimeSeriesGfov. |
| tgas_source | This table is a subset of gaia_source comprising those stars in the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 Catalogues for which a full 5-parameter astrometric solution has been possible in Gaia Data Release 1. This is possible because the early Hipparcos epoch positions break some degeneracies due to the limited Gaia time coverage. This table contains a substantial fraction of the around 2.5 million stars in the Hipparcos and Tycho-2 catalogue. Many stars have been excluded due to several reasons, such as saturation, cross-match errors or bad astrometric solution. |
| variable_summary | Variability summary of sources with photVariableFlag=VARIABLE. |
Data Access
The Gaia data are accessible by a variety of means:
Data Lab Table Access Protocol (TAP) service
TAP provides a convenient access layer to the Gaia catalog database. TAP-aware clients (such as TOPCAT) can point to https://datalab.noirlab.edu/tap, select the gaia_dr3 database, and see the database tables and descriptions. You can also view the Gaia tables and descriptions in the Data Lab table browser.
Data Lab Query Client
The Query Client is available as part of the Data Lab software distribution. The Query Client provides a Python API to Data Lab database services. These services include anonymous and authenticated access through synchronous or asynchronous queries of the catalog made directly to the database. Additional Data Lab services for registered users include personal database storage and storage through the Data Lab VOSpace.
The Query Client can be called from a Jupyter Notebook on the Data Lab Notebook server. Example notebooks are provided to users upon creation of their user account (register here), and are also available to browse on GitHub at https://github.com/astro-datalab/notebooks-latest.
Jupyter Notebook Server
The Data Lab Jupyter Notebook server (authenticated service) contains examples of how to access and visualize the Gaia catalog:
- Searching for extremely metal-poor stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
- Using Gaia DR3 to identify hyper-runaway and hypervelocity white dwarf candidates
- Visualizing Star Clusters in Gaia DR3
- The Tidal Tails of Palomar 5
Acknowledgments
This work presents results from the European Space Agency (ESA) space mission Gaia. Gaia data are being processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for the DPAC is provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia MultiLateral Agreement (MLA). The Gaia mission website is https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia. The Gaia archive website is https://archives.esac.esa.int/gaia.
