Gaia Bulletin #01

Gaia data user notifications covering April - December 2024

Introducing the Gaia Bulletin

The communication format known as the "Gaia newsletter" has been discontinued. Its successor is the current "Gaia Bulletin". Previous subscribers of the Gaia newsletter have been automatically subscribed to the Gaia Bulletin. New subscribers to the Gaia Bulletin can register at esacontact.esa.int/gaia-bulletin-subscribe/. To unsubscribe from the Gaia bulletin, please follow the instructions given on this page.

ESA Science Newsletter

Interested in various ESA science missions and the future of its science programme? ESA has launched the science newsletter, serving the scientific community with programmatic and technical news. Past science newsletters and instructions for how to subscribe can be found here: https://cosmos.esa.int/web/scinews.

Gaia mission updates

• Gaia's end of observations coming up: Access the pages on the Gaia end of observations here.
• The Gaia Science Team webpage was updated to reflect the change of the ESA Project Scientist.
• The Gaia publication count process was updated on this webpage.

Gaia stories published across ESA websites

If you are planning to publish exciting, peer-reviewed results based on Gaia data, we may be able to enhance the visibility of your research with an ESA news release. Please see https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/communicating-your-results for instructions on how to proceed.

These are the stories published in the last months:

• Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids
• Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids (image release)
• Scientists spot hidden companions of bright stars
• Gaia: Milky Way's last major collision was surprisingly recent
• Sailing among the stars - Gaia's role in discovering distant worlds
• Double trouble: Gaia hit by micrometeoroid and solar storm
• Where missions come alive

Recent stories on Gaia Cosmos website

• The Gaia ESA Archive: a first step towards GAia Data release 4
• Gaia discovers interesting duo belonging to the Milky Way halo: an ultracool subdwarf with a white dwarf companion
• 10 years of Gaia science operations
• How binary stars change their stellar dance with age
• Dynamical masses across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
• Did Gaia find its first neutron star?
• A textbook solar eruption
• Gaia's contribution to discovering distant worlds
• New on Gaia mission YouTube Channel: Gaia neutron star candidates
• New on Gaia mission YouTube Channel: Tidal evolution history of a binary star system

News on the Gaia archive and data

• New release of the Gaia ESA Archive on 10 December with some breaking changes for accessing DataLink products.
• The second campaign of the Gaia's citizen science project "Gaia Vari" is ongoing. The recording of the Gaia Vari seminar is available on YouTube.
• Pre-release of Gaia DR4 astrometric parameters for a star to be occulted by Uranus.
• Updates to the Gaia help pages: updated tutorials and the addition of a historical help area.
• Updates to the Gaia Focused Product Release papers page: links to all fully published papers are now available.
• Updates to the Gaia Data Release 3 papers page regarding a few of the Gaia Data Release 3 papers.
• On 25 June 2024, a new release of the Gaia Focused Product Release Documentation was published, accessible via https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia-users/archive.
• Gaia data known issues:
  • Update to Gaia DR3 known issue "NSS: False-positive astrometric binary solutions"
  • New Gaia DR3 known issue: Errors in statistics derived from the image parameter determination
  • New Gaia DR3 known issue in the field of documentation: Astrophysical Parameters - typo in Table 11.13
  • New Gaia DR1 + Gaia DR2 known issue: Variability: Documentation of definition of Fourier decomposition of G-band light curve
• Frequently Asked Questions:
  • New: How can I stop (kill) a job that is being executed?
  • New: How can I transform the Gaia fluxes into mean energy units?

Gaia PhD theses

A list of PhD theses related to Gaia can be found on this page. 10 new theses were added to the list. Please make us aware of Gaia-related theses using the process described here.

Gaia meetings and workshops (past and future)

• 30 September - 2 October 2024: 15th Gaia Science Alerts and ORP Time-Domain workshop. Find the recorded sessions from the workshop page.
• 1 - 5 July 2024: Gaia symposium at EAS "The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond". Find the presentations from the GREAT wiki page.
• 9 - 11 September 2024: Third GaiaUnlimited community workshop. More details with some summaries available here.

Miscellaneous

• New tools available on the Gaia community tools website. If you have a useful tool, feel free to contact us at the Gaia Helpdesk.
• Small tribute to Gaia in the LEGO Milky Way set.
• Interested in a 15-piece Gaia lego model? A set of instructions is available from the Gaia educational resources.
• Gaia interview of DPAC member Berry Holl by Fraser Cain on the Universe Today podcast.
• New release of Gaia Sky on the University of Heidelberg website.
• Updated webpage and library of Gaia publications in peer-reviewed journals.