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Single-object visualisation tool for Gaia

Figure 1. Screenshot of the tool, accessible from the Gaia ESA Archive at https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/ under the tab “SINGLE OBJECT”. The powerful bulk-data visualisation tool can be found under the adjacent tab “VISUALISATION”. Image: ESA/ESDC

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.

The tool offers a name resolver to find the object of interest, a data table listing selected fundamental measured and inferred quantities, and four interactive panels with graphical information:

• Name resolver: the name resolver works using Gaia DR3 designations and it also accepts other object names and coordinates as resolved by SIMBAD/Sesame. A showcase object is pre-loaded when opening the tool, namely the bright classical Cepheid “V* BF Oph” (Gaia DR3 4111834567779557376). Another interesting source worth trying is the RR Lyrae variable “V* RR Cet” (Gaia DR3 2558296724402139392).
• Basic data: this box shows, in up to four tabs, selected basic data of the source extracted from the gaiadr3.gaia_source table.
• ESASky: this widget shows a zoomed region of the sky centred on the object. All functionality of ESASky is available inside the widget using the customary controls.
• Epoch Photometry: this panel displays the time-resolved, integrated photometry in the G, G_BP, and G_RP bands. The individual bands can be toggled on and off in the legend; the display of (proxies for) magnitude errors can also be toggled. This data is available for more than 11 million sources (those with gaiadr3.gaia_source.has_epoch_photometry = ‘TRUE’).
• BP/RP (XP) Spectrum: this panel displays the externally calibrated sampled mean spectrum. This data is available for more than 34 million sources (those with gaiadr3.gaia_source.has_xp_sampled = ‘TRUE’).
• RVS Spectrum: this panel displays the normalised RVS mean spectrum. This data is available for nearly 1 million sources (those with gaiadr3.gaia_source.has_rvs = ‘TRUE’).

Any of the interactive boxes/panels can be expanded by clicking the “Expand”/”Collapse” button in the top-right corner. Inside the plotting panels, which use the plotly framework, various icons allow the user to zoom, re-scale, output .png files, etc.  Help information for this tool has been published on a dedicated Gaia help page.

Any feedback on the page is more than welcome through the Gaia helpdesk.

Credits: Story written by Jos de Bruijne (Gaia Archive Scientist), Héctor Cánovas (Gaia Support Archive Scientist, Telespazio UK for ESA), Pedro García-Lario (Community Support Scientist) and the Astronomy Survey Missions Archives Development Team: Tomás Alonso (RHEA Group for ESA), Pilar de Teodoro (Aurora Technology B.V. for ESA), Jorge Fernández (RHEA Group for ESA), Mónica Fernández (RHEA Group for ESA), María Henar Sarmiento (Aurora Technology B.V. for ESA), Sara Nieto (RHEA Group for ESA), Paolo Pesciullesi (RHEA Group for ESA), and Carlos Ríos (RHEA Group for ESA)

[Published: 18/01/2023]