Gaia

Gaia is a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) providing astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy of some one 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

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.

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
Number of total 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.

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
Number of total 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)

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.

Acknowledgment

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.