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Gaia Newsletter #25

 

Compilation of news and updates from the Gaia mission since late February 2023.

 

Gaia Focused Product Release planned for 10 October 2023

Gaia's data release scenario page has been updated with the planned date for publication of the Gaia Focused Product Release. Save the date: Tuesday 10 October new Gaia data will become available.

The Focused Product Release will be consisting of:

  • Updated astrometry for Solar System objects.
  • 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.

Each data product in this Focused Product Release will be accompanied by a Gaia Collaboration paper. More information on the expected contents of this Focused Product Release will be published soon.

 

Updated Gaia release scenario page

The Gaia release scenario page has been updated in May 2023.

 

Gaia DR3 known issues on synthetic photometry - wrong units in some fields

The units of the SDSS and PanSTARRS1 (PS1) flux and flux error fields in the Gaia DR3 table gaiadr3.synthetic_photometry_gspc (Gaia Collaboration, Montegriffo, et al., 2022) are W m−2 nm−1 but should read W m−2 Hz−1. The reason is that the SDSS and PS1 photometric systems use AB rather than Vega magnitudes. Only the units are wrong: the table and data are otherwise correct.

 

Gaia DR3 Known issue on two false-positive sources in the astrometric binary solutions

During validation of epoch astrometry for Gaia DR4, an error was discovered, that had already had an impact on the Gaia DR3 non-single star results. The investigation showed that two specific targets suffered of this software bug. We can conclude that the solutions for Gaia DR3 4698424845771339520 (WD 0141-675; also the entry in gaiadr3.binary_masses is no longer valid as it was based on the orbit solution) and Gaia DR3 5765846127180770432 (HIP 64690) both are false-positives as far as Gaia non-single star processing is concerned.  Note that the astrometric and other parameters of these objects in the gaiadr3.gaia_source table in the archive are not affected by this issue. Investigations continue to assess if any additional sources have been impacted.

 

Gaia Data Release 3 special issue

Find the special issue with Gaia's data release 3 papers here. All Gaia Data Release 3 papers can be found on the Gaia DR3 papers page as well. Please realize that the Gaia DR3 papers are complementary to the Gaia EDR3 papers and the Gaia data release documentation.

 

Published across ESA websites

The following stories were published across ESA websites.

 

Stories on Gaia Cosmos

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

 

6th DPAC consortium meeting was organized in March 2023

Gaia's Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is responsible for the transfer of the Gaia raw data into Gaia scientific data products, made available from the Gaia archive and its partner data centres as data releases. The consortium consists of more than 450 scientists, engineers and software developers from across Europe and beyond. Due to the pandemic, meeting in person with a large fraction of the collaboration was not possible in the past few years. In March 2023, the 6th Gaia DPAC consortium meeting was organized and brought a full week of preparations for Gaia's Focused Product Release (planned on 10 October 2023) and Gaia's Data Release 4 (not expected before the end of 2025).

 

GaiaUnlimited Community workshop in October

From October 4 to 6 2023 the second GaiaUnlimited community workshop will take place in Torino, Italy. The GaiaUnlimited project aims at determining the Gaia survey selection function and providing corresponding data and tools.

The workshop's theme is the Gaia selection function and how to use it. This event will be a three-day workshop and unconference, where we will discuss and learn from each other about the finer details of the Gaia selection function and how to build and use it in various contexts.

Participants will be working with the updated GaiaUnlimited selection function tools, for which assitance will be provided as needed, and which will be improved based on the feedback received. We hope this workshop could lead to some new collaborations or initial joint studies. We want to dedicate a significant amount of time to unconference sessions and informal discussions.

Sign up for the workshop (there is no conference fee)

There will be space for about 40 participants. Registration is open until June 15. After selection based on the registration form, invitations will be sent out to attend the workshop on July 1.

 

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.

 

Did you know...

 

Gaia PhD theses

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

Year Name Title Institute Country Supervisor
2022 Leclerc, Aurélia Les binaires et exoplanètes vues par Hipparcos et Gaia Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble France Carine Babusiaux
2022 Rybicki, Krzysztof A. Astrometric microlensing and its astrophysical applications in the era of new generation space satellites Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory Poland Łukasz Wyrzykowski

 

 

Upcoming first anniversary of Gaia's data release 3

On 13 June Gaia's data release 3 will celebrate its first anniversary. Feeling nostalgic? Browse through the Gaia DR3 release material! A list of stories related to Gaia's data release 3 is available from this webpage with science highlights of Gaia DR3.

Gaia Data Release 3 - in-depth stories - published on 13 June 2022

Image and video releases for Gaia Data Release 3 - published on 13 June 2022

Press releases for Gaia Data Release 3 - published on 13 June 2022