News 2023

Gaia Newsletter #31

Compilation of news and updates from the Gaia mission since late November 2023 with a focus on Gaia's 10 years in space!

Gaia celebrates 10 years in space

We celebrate Gaia's 10 years in space with a story highlighting Gaia's impact on the Milky Way. Gaia's data finds use cases in a wide variety of astronomy fields. 10 areas were chosen to summarise Gaia's influence on these fields. Several videos and reels were produced for this special occasion. Find below a summary to all the material.

• Story published on esa.int/gaia on Gaia's impact on the Milky Way: Gaia's decade of discoveries unravelling the intricacies of our galaxy
• An updated view of the Milky Way - face on: The Milky Way's updated image
• A reel produced for ESA's instagram: Gaia turns 10
• An interactive map based on Gaia's (Early) Data Release 3 sky in colour.
• An infographic highlighting Gaia's achievements over its 10 years in space
• 10 science topics to celebrate Gaia's 10 years in space, starting from Earth and moving out into the Milky Way and then further, beyond the Milky Way:
  • Earth: stellar occultation
  • Solar System: asteroids and moons
  • Milky Way: spiral arms and structure
  • Milky Way: stellar companions
  • Milky Way and beyond: special stars
  • Milky Way and beyond: stellar DNA
  • Milky Way and beyond: 3D motion
  • Beyond the Milky Way: Milky Way satellites
  • Beyond the Milky Way: Gaia's galaxies
  • Beyond the Milky Way: cosmology with Gaia
• For Gaia's launch, a special fairing logo was created by Joël Schopfer. A follow-up celebration image was shared with us for Gaia's 10 years in space.
• A special anniversary logo was developed for the ESA Gaia mission by Gaia's Data Processing and Analysis Consortium.
• The Gaia team collaborated with Galactic Chloé, which brought this great video produced by Galactic Studios: This strange object has been talking to us for 10 years.  A short reel was produced as well to persuade people to watch the full video.
• Gaia teams celebrated across Europe this important milestone for the Gaia mission. Often accompanied with an amazing cake!

Enjoy the celebration of Gaia's 10 years in space!

New Frequently Asked Question

Why can I not query my user table? Why do I see an error: "relation "user_<user_name>.<field>" does not exist Position: XYZ”? As explained in the Upload a user table tutorial (and since the Gaia ESA Archive has been upgraded to v3.2), user tables that contain capital letters and / or special characters (e.g., "&" or ".") in their names must be queried using double quotation marks as in the following example:  SELECT * FROM user_<user_name>."My_table". Additionally, any user tables named solely with SQL reserved keywords (e.g., size or join) or ADQL reserved keywords (e.g., round or distance) must also use double quotation marks, e.g., user_<user_name>."size". This also applies to job uploads and TAP uploads.

Gaia PhD theses

A list of PhD theses related to Gaia can be found on this page. Newest addition to this page is given below:

Gaia peer-reviewed publications

Gaia's peer-reviewed publications are available from this ADS library. The library has passed the milestone of 10,000 papers now!

Happy holidays from Gaia

Sing along with Gaia's holiday song.

Gathering all the stars

and asteroids as well,

Gaia’s working hard

to get down all the data!

With DPAC on its side,

producing new releases,

Gaia’s spinning round and round

humming this new sound:

Jingle bells, Jingle bells,

Gaia scans the sky!

Oh what nice it is to have

a billion stars on hand.

Jingle bells, Jingle bells,

Gaia scans the sky!

Oh what fine it is to find

more treasures all around.

Changing magnitudes,

colours, brightnesses,

does it move away?

Gaia solves it all…

Explosions far and near,

there is no escape,

alerts are sent to the world,

scientists check them out

Jingle bells, Jingle bells,

Gaia scans the sky!

Oh what nice it is to have

a billion stars on hand.

Jingle bells, Jingle bells,

Gaia humms away...

Oh what nice it is to wish

you “Happy Holidays!"