News 2023

Gaia Newsletter #24

Compilation of news and updates from the Gaia mission since late September 2022.

Gaia Collaboration receives 2023 Berkeley Prize

The Gaia collaboration has been honoured with the 2023 Lancelot M. Berkeley − New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy for enabling a transformative, multidimensional map of the Milky Way. Since its launch in 2013, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has recorded stellar positions, distances, colors, and proper motions for nearly two billion stars in our galaxy. According to the prize statement, “Gaia’s three data releases will long be regarded as major events in the history of astronomy, triggering a global partnership to better understand the origin, structure, and destiny of our home galaxy.”

Full details in the announcement here: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/news/2022-11-09-gaia-collaboration-to-receive-2023-berkeley-prize

Gaia DR3 known issue affecting the Gaia golden sample of astrophysical parameters

Please be alerted of the new known issue affecting 2 source ids of sources from the Gaia golden sample of astrophysical parameters. The known issue can be found on this page.

Gaia DR3 known issues on synthetic photometry

On 9 January 2023 two new Gaia DR3 known issues were published: "Synthetic photometry: Wrong units in SDSS and PS1 flux and flux error fields in table gaiadr3.synthetic_photometry_gspc" and "Synthetic photometry: Error in the PS1 synthetic photometry in table gaiadr3.synthetic_photometry_gspc​". Please have a look at the Gaia DR3 known issues page for the full details when making use of synthetic photometry table.

Updates to the Gaia Archive data tables

On 7 February 2023, three tables have been added to the Gaia Data Release 3 catalogue in the Gaia Archive:

• A new table chemical_cartography was added derived from the paper "Gaia Data Release 3: Chemical cartography of the Milky Way"
• A new table vari_spurious_signals was added derived from the paper "Gaia Data Release 3: Gaia scan-angle dependent signals and spurious periods"
• The data in the table gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit, originally published on 13 June 2022, contained serious errors and users were advised on 23 June 2022 not to use them (see this known issue). On 7 February 2023, the original, erroneous table was renamed to gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit_13june2022 and replaced by a new table with the (original) name vari_planetary_transit

Gaia DR3 known issue on variability: planetary transits

Following the updated table gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit, the Gaia DR3 known issue "Variability: planetary transits" was updated on 7 February 2023 reflecting the changes made to the name of the erroneous table. The information of this known issue is copied below:

The Gaia DR3 table named vari_planetary_transit contains information on the period and other properties (transit reference time, depth, duration, etc.) of 41 new planetary transit candidates and 173 known exoplanets (Eyer et al. 2022, Panahi et al. 2022). The data in the table gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit, originally published on 13 June 2022 with solution_id = 375316653866487564, contained serious errors and users were advised on 23 June 2022 not to use them.

On 7 February 2023 at 11:00 CET, the original, erroneous table was renamed to gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit_13june2022 and replaced by a new table with the (original) name gaiadr3.vari_planetary_transit and solution_id = 375523436409132247. This change applies to the table available from the Gaia ESA Archive as well as from the bulk-download repository.

New release of Gaia DR3 data release documentation

The changes regarding the addition of tables to the Gaia Archive and the updates to the table on planetary transits have been incorporated into the Gaia data release documentation along with updates to the executive summary and the references to some papers. A new version "Gaia data release 3 documentation version 1.2" has been released on 7 February 2023.

Gaia DR3 papers

The Gaia DR3 papers page has been further updated with links to the Gaia Data Release 3 papers. Please realize that the Gaia DR3 papers are complementary to the Gaia EDR3 papers and the Gaia data release documentation. The A&A special issue for this data release is in progress.

Published across ESA websites

The following stories were published across ESA websites.

• A story about stellar occultations, made possible with Gaia's exquisite star data, was published by ESA Enabling & Support: "Shadow hunters capture Didymos asteroid eclipsing stars"
• A story on the surprising detection of a gamma-ray burst by Gaia and many other spacecraft was published by ESA Science & Exploration: "ESA spacecraft catch the brightest ever gamma-ray burst"
• Published by ESA Space Safety, a story discussing near-Earth asteroids and how Gaia helps to improve their orbits: "30 000 near-Earth asteroids discovered and rising"

Stories on Gaia Cosmos

The following stories have been published on Gaia Cosmos since the last newsletter in September 2022:

• Gaia reaches to the clouds – 3D kinematics of the LMC
• Meet your neighbours: CNS5 - the fifth catalogue of nearby stars
• A single-object visualisation tool for Gaia objects
• 100 months of Gaia data
• The astonishment, a Gaia mural to inspire
• Gamma-Ray Burst detection from Lagrange 2 point by Gaia
• Gaia's first black hole discovery: Gaia BH1
• Are Newton and Einstein in error after all?
• Gaia ESA Archive goes live with third data release
• Mapping the interstellar medium using the Gaia RVS spectra

Single-object visualisation tool for Gaia

As part of Gaia’s third data release (Gaia DR3), millions of stars now have their spectra and/or light curves revealed by Gaia. Whereas the Gaia ESA Archive already offers an interactive visualisation service that is meant to explore the data in bulk, the Archive now also offers a single-object visualisation tool to explore the new data. This tool was published in January 2023 along with the new version of the Gaia Archive.

Gaia Photometric Science Alerts at Risk

The Gaia Photometric Science Alerts consists of a pipeline feeding candidate transients into a web portal. This allows the community to follow up on potentially interesting events seen by Gaia immediately following observations taken. Currently, these Gaia Alerts are at risk due to a combination of factors. More info can be found from the news item published here  http://gsaweb.ast.cam.ac.uk/alerts/home.

Gaia Focused Product Release

The anticipated contents of the Gaia Focused Product Release are summarized below. These data sets are based on 34 months of data (same period covering Gaia's data release 3) with the exception of the updated astrometry for Solar System objects, which will be based on an extended period of data. With respect to the previous announcement, the pre-main sequence accretion parameters have been postponed to Gaia's data release 4.

• Astrometry and photometry from engineering images taken in selected regions of high source density (only Omega Cen for this FPR).
• The first results of quasars' environment analysis for gravitational lenses search.
• Extended radial velocity epoch data for Long Period Variables.
• Diffuse Interstellar Bands from aggregated RVS spectra.
• Pre-main sequence accretion parameters (postponed to Gaia DR4)
• Updated astrometry for Solar System objects

Gaia Focused Product Release is anticipated in quarter 4 of 2023. The processing for Gaia data release 4 is currently ongoing and its publication is expected not before the end of 2025.

Graduate Trainee positions at ESA

The ESA graduate trainee positions for 2023 have been published, and one of them covers activities for the Gaia mission. Applications for the position "Young Graduate Trainee in Machine-Learning Techniques Application for Astrometry - Gaia" are welcome. Deadline for applications is 28 February 2023.

If you have any questions on the ESA graduate positions, an information session is held on 7 February at 20:00 CET and on 16 February as well. More info can be found here.

More vacancies in the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium are published by the Gaia mission as well. Currently there is an open position for a scientific developer for ESA Gaia mission variability studies in Geneva.

Gaia XPloration, announcement of a Gaia XP workshop

From 15 to 19 May 2023 the first meeting on the Gaia XP low resolution spectra, organized also by members the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, will be held in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop is to bring together DPAC members and the scientific community that benifits from the Gaia data, to discuss how to use the XP spectra, to understand and maximize the outputs from the various methods for inferring stellar parameters and abundances, how the spectra can be useful for the spectro-photometric calibration of ground-based data, and more. Last, but not least, by encouraging brainstorming and collective work, we hope to create new scientific opportunities that will lead to new collaborations.

You can sign up for the workshop here. There is no conference fee, but there is a limited room capacity. Registrations can be submitted until 1st of March 2023 and will be confirmed by 15th of March 2023.

Did you know...

• More than 8,600 Gaia papers have been published by now?
• The Gaia data release scenario page is the go-to page for information on future Gaia data releases?
• A dedicated Gaia symposium will be held at the European Astronomical Society Annual meeting?
• More than 2 trillion astrometric CCD measurements were obtained by Gaia...? These were obtained with Gaia's 62 astrometric CCDs and its 14 Sky-Mapper CCDs.
• Gaia celebrates its 10th launch anniversary in 2023?
• A new version of PyGaia for Gaia DR3 has been published?

Gaia PhD theses

A list of PhD theses related to Gaia can be found on this page. Newest additions to this page are:

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Interested in communicating your Gaia science results?

We are interested to hear about your Gaia science results. Maybe you have an image or visualisation to share, or you might be working towards a paper to be published. On the “Communicate your Gaia science results page” you can find some guidelines on how to contact us and what type of information will be needed from you. Please remember to contact us early in the process!