Gaia News

2024-12-20 Self-registration portlet is not working properly

​​​​​​​Following the migration of our web portal on Monday 16 December, some of our portlets are not yet fully functioning. The self-registration portlet, used for registering an account with our Gaia Archive, is currently having issues, not allowing all steps for the registration to be taken. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Our IT teams have indicated that it will take until early January before this issue can be fixed.

2024-12-03 New updates to the Gaia Community Tools

Within the astronomical community, many very useful tools are available for use with Gaia data. A non-exhaustive list is given on our Gaia Community Tools webpage. Several new updates were published recently to the page.

2024-11-29 New members of the Gaia Science Team

A new group picture has been posted following the arrival of new members in the Gaia Science Team. Rodolfo Smiljanic from Warsaw, Poland and Johannes Sahlmann from ESAC (new Gaia Project Scientist since this year) now appear in the picture as well. We thank Timo Prusti for his contribution to the Gaia mission as project scientist. He was active as Gaia Science Team chair since 2007 and will retire from this duty end December 2024.

Find the list of Gaia Science Team members here, with the new group picture as well.

2024-11-04 Pre-release of Gaia DR4 astrometric parameters for a star to be occulted by Uranus

On 12 November 2024 the star Gaia DR3 56716009513720320 will be occulted by the Solar System planet Uranus, which offers a rare opportunity to study the ring system and atmosphere of the planet. To allow for the best-possible planning for the ground-based occultation observing campaigns, we make the preliminary Gaia Data Release 4 (Gaia DR4) single-star astrometric solution parameters for this star public:

Table: Gaia DR4 single-star solution parameters of the star that will be occulted by Uranus. The parameter name can be used to look up the detailed description in the Gaia DR3 online documentation. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, please follow the acknowledgment guidelines as given here and please also cite the Gaia mission paper.

The predicted occultation path is published by the Lucky Star Project on this website: https://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/occ.php?p=131499

Occultation map for the occultation by Uranus on 12 November 2024, currently obtained using Gaia DR3 data. More details from source: https://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/occ.php?p=131499.

In 2016, before Gaia's first data release (Gaia DR1), a similar effort was done for the occultation observation of Pluto, a story that can be found here. A pre-release of Gaia DR2 data was made in 2017 in support of occultation events of Triton and Chariklo, see the details here. The Gaia mission also helped with the occultation campaigns for the Kuiper Belt Object observed by the NASA New Horizons mission (more details here). More details on how Gaia helps stellar occultation in general can be found here and from the published stories "Astronomers spy Europa blocking distant star - thanks to Gaia" and "Shadow hunters capture Didymos asteroid eclipsing stars".

The Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is currently processing the Gaia data and Gaia Data Release 4 is expected not before mid 2026.

2024-10-20 New release of Gaia Sky

On 17 October 2024, Gaia Sky released a new version. The software is open-source and can be used to visualise Gaia data and can be found from the University of Heidelberg website.

2024-10-03 Gaia's end of observations coming up

The Gaia spacecraft relies on a cold gas propellant to keep it spinning and scanning the sky. The amount of remaining cold gas decreases by about a dozen grams per day and is reaching its end in early 2025. The Gaia science observations will therefore end on 15 January 2025, meaning that no more nominal science data will be acquired by Gaia after that date. This is, however, far from being the end of this transformative mission!

The Gaia scientific and engineering teams will continue to work full steam on the preparations for Gaia Data Release 4, which is not “more of the same” but will make new groundbreaking science possible by including a much larger data volume, many more data products, and data of overall better quality compared to Gaia Data Release 3. In the course of 2025, once all of Gaia’s nominal science data have been downlinked to Earth, the processing for the final Gaia Data Release 5 will ramp up to full speed and run in parallel to the processing of Gaia Data Release 4. Gaia Data Release 4, covering 5.5 years of mission data, is expected in 2026 and Gaia Data Release 5, covering the full 10.5 years of mission data, around the end of the decade.  

After Gaia’s science observations end on 15 January 2025, a period of technology tests will commence. These technology tests will allow us to study in more detail the behaviour of some spacecraft and instrument components, with the potential of further improving the Gaia calibrations and aiding the design of future space missions. After these tests, which will last several weeks, the Gaia spacecraft will leave its orbit around the Lagrange point L2 to be put into its final heliocentric orbit, away from Earth’s sphere of influence. Eventually, the Gaia spacecraft will be passivated in March/April 2025 and reach its well-deserved retirement.

Find lots more details on this milestone for the Gaia mission here, including details on how to follow-up on Gaia when it becomes more visible from ground due to changes in its attitude.

Access the pages on the Gaia end of observations here

2024-09-11 Opening for a Gaia science operations scientist

Today a job opening has been posted for a Gaia science operations scientist on the ESA Careers website. The deadline for applications is 2 October.

Gaia will end its operational life in the first half of 2025, after which the mission’s post-operations phase will begin. Four highly successful data releases (DRs) have been achieved so far, all of which were major, transformational events for the astronomical world. A fifth release, Gaia DR4, is currently being prepared for publication in 2026, and a final release, Gaia DR5, is expected to conclude the mission by the end of the decade. Gaia has a relatively long post-operations phase of five and a half years, reflecting the complexity of turning the basic observation data from 10.5 years of science operations into legacy data products of the highest quality.

As a Science Operations Scientist, you will be initially assigned to the Gaia mission, under the direct responsibility of the Mission Manager in the Mission Management and Science Operations Division within SCI-S. The role will later evolve into that of a Science Operations Scientist for an operational mission or mission in development.

Full details of this job opening can be found here.

2024-08-27 ESA Science Research Fellowships open for submissions

ESA's postdoctoral Research Fellowship programme offers early-career scientists and engineers the possibility to carry out research in a variety of disciplines related to Space Science, Space Applications or Space Technology. The call for applications is now open, with a deadline of 16 September.

The Research Fellowships in Space Science specifically offer the opportunity to contribute to ESA's endeavour to explore our Solar System and the Universe, in the fields of Heliophysics, Planetary Science, Astrophysics and Fundamental Physics. The research fellowships offer unique insights into ESA's environment and activities while conducting cutting-edge research. Mentoring and training opportunities are available, as are possibilities to engage with ESA science-related activities (e.g. archives, data science and machine learning, operations, calibration, communication, citizen science).

Appointments are for a maximum of three years. The initial project is for two years, an extension for a third year is frequently granted following a dedicated proposal for extension.

Within the Science Directorate (SCI), we welcome all independent proposals for innovative research associated with one or more of our missions. The Space Science fellowships can be taken up at any of the three sites: ESAC (Spain), ESTEC (Netherlands), or STScI (USA) and we encourage applicants to choose sites that allow for best local collaborations. To learn more about the research conducted by the ESA scientists at different sites, please visit the Faculty Member Directory, and the pages for the Faculty research groups. There is a separate page for research at the ESA Office at STScI.

More information on the Research Fellowship programme is available at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/space-science-faculty/opportunities/research-fellowships.

Find Gaia specific topics here: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/space-science-faculty/research/gaia

2024-08-08 Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids

ESA’s star-surveying Gaia mission has again proven to be a formidable asteroid explorer, spotting potential moons around more than 350 asteroids not known to have a companion. Previously, Gaia had explored asteroids known to have moons — so-called ‘binary asteroids’ — and confirmed that the telltale signs of these tiny moons show up in the telescope’s ultra-accurate astrometric data. But this new finding proves that Gaia can conduct ‘blind’ searches to discover completely new candidates, too. Full story on esa.int/gaia: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_spots_possible_moons_around_hundreds_of_asteroids.

2024-07-17 Double trouble: Gaia hit by micrometeoroid and solar storm

Launched in December 2013, ESA’s Gaia spacecraft is on a mission to map the locations and motions of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way with extreme precision. But it’s not easy being a satellite: space is a dangerous place. In recent months, hyper-velocity space dust and the strongest solar storm in 20 years have threatened Gaia’s ability to carry out the precise measurements for which it is famous.

Find the full story published by ESA Enabling & Support here: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Double_trouble_Gaia_hit_by_micrometeoroid_and_solar_storm

2024-07-10 Presentations of Gaia Symposium at EAS available now

Last week the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society was held in Italy. The symposium "Gaia: The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond" was well received and contained many interesting talks. The presentation slides of the talks, as well as links to the posters, are now available from the GREAT wiki page.

2024-07-16 15th Gaia Science Alerts and ORP Time-Domain workshop

From 30 September to 2 October 2024, the 15th Gaia Science Alerts and ORP Time-Domain workshop will take place in Heraklion, Crete. The Gaia Photometric Science Alerts now exist for 10 years. Immediately following the initial data processing and alert identification, any interesting brightening or dimming of sources is made public in the form of a Gaia Alerts. This is typically about 2-3 days after the observation was taken by the Gaia space telescope. The dedicated per-alert pages include all the data Gaia has collected for that source, including the light curves and low resolution BPRP spectra.

Interested to attend the workshop? More details on the workshop page. Registration closes on the 26th of August.

2024-06-20 ESA release: Scientists spot hidden companions of bright stars

Photographing faint objects close to bright stars is incredibly difficult. Yet, by combining data from ESA's Gaia space telescope with ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the ground, scientists managed just that. They took the first pictures of so far unseen dim companions of eight luminous stars. The technique unlocks the tantalising possibility to capture images of planets orbiting close to their host stars. ESA released a story today on this topic: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Scientists_spot_hidden_companions_of_bright_stars.

Credits: ESA - CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

2024-06-17 Gaia symposium at EAS "The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond"

The European Astronomical Society (EAS) will be meeting from 1-5 July in Padova, Italy. On 1 and 2 July a symposium is organised to present and discuss cience highlights resulting from Gaia EDR3 and Gaia DR3: "The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: from the Solar System to our Milky Way and beyond". More information is available from the EAS website Symposium 4, with a detailed programme of the speakers from the interactive programme for 1 July, and for 2 July by searching for the S4 series.

2024-06-10 Gaia: Milky Way’s last major collision was surprisingly recent

Our galaxy has collided with many others in its lifetime. ESA’s Gaia space telescope now reveals that the most recent of these crashes took place billions of years later than we thought. A story on this finding was published on esa.int/gaia: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_Milky_Way_s_last_major_collision_was_surprisingly_recent.

Credits: Halo stars: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, T Donlon et al. 2024; Background Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar

2024-05-27 Update to Gaia DR3 known issue "NSS: False-positive astrometric binary solutions"

A few new cases of false-positive astrometric binary solutions were identified. These cases have been added now to the Gaia DR3 known issue "NSS: False-positive astrometric binary solutions".

The text now reads:

During validation of the astrometric timeseries (epoch astrometry) for Gaia DR4, an error was discovered that had already had an impact on the Gaia DR3 non-single star results published in the gaiadr3.nss_two_body_orbit table. The investigation showed that four specific targets suffered of this software bug and that the astrometric-orbit solutions of Gaia DR3 4698424845771339520 (WD 0141-675), Gaia DR3 5765846127180770432 (HIP 64690), Gaia DR3 522135261462534528 (54 Cas), and Gaia DR3 1712614124767394816  (HIP 66074) are false-positives as far as Gaia non-single star processing is concerned. The former two cases had already been reported here in May 2023. Independently, the HIP 64690 orbit solution was identified as spurious by Spaeth et al. 2023 (DOI 10.3847/2515-5172/acb3c5).
 
The Gaia DR3 4698424845771339520, Gaia DR3 522135261462534528, and Gaia DR3 1712614124767394816 entries in gaiadr3.binary_masses are no longer valid as they were based on the orbit solutions. For all four sources,  the astrometric and other parameters in the gaiadr3.gaia_source table are not affected and remain valid.
 
An internal investigation of astrometric orbit solutions of sources with inferred substellar-companion candidates did not reveal additional false-positives. The new status of the HIP 66074 DR3 orbital solution as false positive does not put into question the radial-velocity discovery of an exoplanet around this source by Sozzetti et al. 2023 (DOI 10.1051/0004-6361/202347329).

2024-05-24 ESA Science Newsletter

Interested in ESA's science missions? How they come to be? What big science questions they hope to answer? We are launching the ESA Science newsletter, serving the scientific community with programmatic and technical news. Info and subscribe: https://cosmos.esa.int/web/scinews.

2024-05-24 Small tribute to Gaia in LEGO Milky Way set

A small tribute is given to ESA's 3D galaxy mapper Gaia in the new LEGO Milky Way set. A 4-piece mini Gaia spacecraft! Interested in a 15-piece Gaia lego model? A set of instructions is available from the Gaia educational resources.

Milky Way LEGO set with a model of the Gaia spacecraft. Credits for the LEGO set: LEGO

2023-05-24 Downtime of some Gaia and ESA IT services

Today, due to maintenance, the following services are temporarily unavailable or affected:

• Gaia mailing will experience a delay which can go up to a few hours.
• Gaia Jira, Gaia wiki, Gaia CrushFTP, Gaia Helpdesk as well as Gaia Nexus are unavailable between 11:00 and 13:00
• Authentication with CAS can be affected today (especially before 13:00) as well.

2024-05-17 Interview of Berry Holl by Fraser Cain on the Universe Today podcast

A nice interview can be watched on the Univese Today podcast. Berry Holl, member of the Gaia Collaboration working at the University of Geneva, talks with Fraser Cain on the Gaia spacecraft, measuring the speed of stars and what is to be expected with the next data releases.

Video interview of Berry Holl by Fraser Cain

2024-05-15 Announcement of the third GaiaUnlimited community workshop

From September 9 to 11, 2024 the third GaiaUnlimited community workshop will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands. 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 we will assist as needed, and we will improve them based on the feedback we'll receive. 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.

You can sign up for the workshop here: https://gaia-unlimited.github.io/community-workshop3/

*There is no conference fee.*

There will be space for about 40 participants. Registration is open until June 14. After selection based on the registration form, we will send out the invitations to attend the workshop on July 1.

2024-04-26 Gaia DPAC services and Gaia Archive are back online. Datalink is now also back up.

UPDATE: All Gaia systems are back online. Also Datalink is back online for the Gaia Archive.

2024-04-22 Sailing among the stars – Gaia's role in discovering distant worlds

Gaia is a cosmic cartographer, mapping out the positions, movements, and other details of over a billion stars in our galaxy and beyond. While Gaia's main task is to study stars, it is also a treasure trove for finding planets beyond our Solar System. Today ESA published a story discussing Gaia's impact on the exoplanet field: Sailing among the stars – Gaia's role in discovering distant worlds, written by our intern on Gaia Science Communications: Mariasole Agazzi.

2024-04-16 Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists

Gaia finds the most massive stellar black hole in our Milky Way. Gaia BH3 has a mass of 33 solar masses, is the second closest black hole to Earth now at approximately 2000 light years away and is part of a wide binary system with an old giant star, estimated at an age of 11 billion years. Read more in the story published on esa.int/gaia: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Sleeping_giant_surprises_Gaia_scientists .

2024-04-15 Upcoming press release on intermediate Gaia Collaboration paper

Tomorrow morning, Tuesday 16 April 2024, ESA as well as many institutes from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium will publish a press release related to an intermediate Gaia Collaboration paper. Keep posted!

The Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is currently processing and validating the data that will be published in Gaia Data Release 4, which is not expected before the end of 2025. The latest updates for the Gaia Data Release scenario are always published from this page.

2024-04-11 PhD thesis prize of the French Astronomical Society awareded to Gabriele Contursi, Gaia DPAC member

We are proud to announce that the PhD thesis prize of the French Astronomical Society has been awarded to our Gaia Collaboration member: Gabriele Contursi. Congratulations from Gaia!

Gabriele Contursi completed his thesis in October 2023 at the Lagrange Laboratory of the Côte d'Azur Observatory, under the supervision of Patrick de Laverny. His work focused on the production of s-elements in the Milky Way by analysing spectroscopic data collected both from the ground and from space, thanks to the Gaia mission. Gabriele was a member of the CU8/GSP-spec module and contributed to the analysis of the millions of stellar spectra collected by the Gaia RVS instrument, resulting in an essential contribution to the third data release. More specifically, Gabriele built the GSP-spec spectral line list adopted by GSP-spec. Then, Gabriele used the Gaia DR3 GSP-spec data to study the Ce content in various Galactic stellar populations, as well as the abundances of the Nd and Ce at the surface of asymptotic giant branch stars. In addition to the quality and impact of his work for the community, the SF2A board also highlights the exceptional quality of his thesis manuscript.

Find the official announcement here (in French).

2024-04-11 Larger downtime of Gaia ESA Archive and several Gaia systems in use by the Gaia collaboration expected

Following major building renovation work at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), we will be moving our data centre containing all our IT hardware infrastructure. We understand the inconvenience this may cause and sincerely apologize for this downtime. We’ve taken this opportunity to improve our data centre infrastructure to significantly increase its reliability and its energy efficiency. Our teams will be working hard to resume all our services as soon as possible, once the move is complete.

IMPORTANT: Many of our services, including the Gaia ESA Archive, will be down from 18 April 17:30 CEST until 23 April 08:30 CEST.

More details:

• On 17 April at 12:00 CEST systems affecting the Gaia Collaboration will be stopped: Nexus and SVN, to allow for backups to be in place before the migration starts.
• On 17 April at 17:00 CEST systems affecting the Gaia Collaboration and depending on databases will be stopped. This will include many of the CU1 tools like MDBdictionary and GOST tools.
• On 18 April at 17:00 CEST applications affecting the communication with the Gaia Collaboration will be stopped. Gaia mailing lists will stop working and emails send during the downtime period should not be considered sent and should be resend on the 23rd of April to ensure their arrival.
• On 18 April at 17:30 CEST applications affecting the Gaia Collaboration will be stopped: Jira, Wiki, Helpdesk, Confluence, etc.
• On 18 April at 17:30 CEST the Gaia Archive will go down.
• On 23 April at 08:30 CEST systems will be back up. Some systems might need some extra time to be brought back up. Don't be alarmed if a system is not immediately responsive on the 23rd. If you still encounter issues with systems by 23 April evening, then please inform the Gaia helpdesk so we can look into it.

Certain systems and websites will remain available, among which Gaia cosmos, Gaia help pages and Gaia content server.

The Gaia helpdesk will remain active as an email inbox only. You can reach us at our helpdesk email address: gaia-helpdesk  at  esa.int

2024-03-26 New Gaia Archive GACS release today

Today the Gaia Archive has been patched and the latest version of GACS is now 3.5.3. Find full details on the patches performed from the Gaia Archive release notes. Version 3.5.3 contains among others the following general improvements (for full details with complete overview of updates and patches be referred to the release notes):

• Archive Web Interface (GUI): The Single Object Tool now includes a new ESASky selector plugin. 
• TAP service: Addition of reference epoch and positional fields to the positional catalogues in the Gaia FPR: crowded_field_source, lens_candidates, lens_observation, lens_outlier.
• DataLink service: The "source_id" field can now be used to retrieve DataLink products via VO-clients like TOPCAT thanks to the updated Service Descriptors generated by the Archive.
• Astroquery: JSON files can be downloaded.
• ADQL 2.1: Several User Defined Functions (UDFs) are now available (see also the "IVOA-endorsed UDFs" section in the ADQL: Implementation in the Gaia ESA Archive tutorial)
• Tutorials (new and/or updated): Gaia Collaboration queries updated with different use cases related to the astrophysical_parameters and astrophysical_parameters_supp tables.
• External catalogues: Added CatWISE2020 external catalogue and Gaia-ESO Survey (data release 5.1) external catalogue.

2023-03-18 Gaia maps largest ever collection of quasars in space and time

Astronomers have created the largest yet cosmic 3D map of quasars: bright and active centres of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. This map shows the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, with the furthest shining bright when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old. Read more in the story published on esa.int/gaia: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/03/Gaia_maps_largest_ever_collection_of_quasars_in_space_and_time

2024-03-06 Gaia Symposium at the European Astronomical Society

On 1 and 2 July, a symposium dedicated to Gaia's Two Billion Star Galaxy Census is organized, dealing with subjects from the Solar System to the Milky Way and beyond. More details on this symposium can be found here.

2024-03-05 Graduate Trainee positions at ESA

The ESA graduate trainee positions for 2024 have been published. Applications for the position "Young Graduate Trainee in Machine Learning & Accessibility for Space Science" are welcome. Deadline for applications is 7 March 2024.

2024-03-06 Astrometry focus meeting at the IAU General Assembly 2024

This year's International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly features a focus meeting on Astrometry (14-15 August 2024) in Cape Town, South Africa. The Focus meeting website is online at https://sarao.ac.za/iau_fm11/. The General Assembly is open for early registration at https://astronomy2024.org/registration/.

The objectives of the Focus Meeting are described below:

The field of astrometry is in a golden era with spectacular progress at multiple wavelengths thanks to the massive progress made with the Gaia mission in both the number of objects and precision of its optical astrometry survey. Spectacular progress is also being made with ground-based optical interferometry such as the Very Large Telescope’s GRAVITY instrument and other extremely large aperture optical telescopes. In the radio, rapid progress is being made in simultaneous 4-wavelength instruments such as the Korean (22-129 GHz), VGOS (3-10 GHz), and JPL (8-36 GHz) VLBI systems. Many new instruments are emerging with broad wavelength coverage and increased sensitivity such as the SKA and next-generation VLA. High-accuracy astrometric data is now used across a number of astronomy disciplines and in solar system science as well as mission-enabling disciplines such as spacecraft tracking.The 2024 IAU GA in South Africa is the natural venue to bring these communities together.

Focus meeting 11 aims to bring together the practitioners and users of high accuracy astrometric data in order to inform the community on recent scientific successes in astrometry, to educate the community on advances in astrometric techniques across different wavelength ranges and instrument concepts, and to inspire future advances.

In particular, we aim at bringing together the various astrometry communities (Optical/IR, radio, ground and space-based surveys, specialized astrometric instruments) which often work in relative isolation from each other. The Focus meeting will promote understanding of the complementarity of the various branches of astrometry and thus reveal synergies between the different astrometric techniques thereby driving the definition of future directions for our discipline. We note that as the first IAU GA in Africa, this meeting provides an excellent opportunity to encourage greater interactions with our African colleagues. We seek to highlight African instruments coming into focus such as the SKA, the African VLBI Network (AVN), and the proposed Namibia and Kilimanjaro mm telescopes.

2023-12-19 Gaia celebrates 10 years in space!

Having been launched on 19 December 2013, Gaia has now spent 10 years in space! Today we celebrate these 10 amazing years with 10 science topis, starting with Gaia's impact on Earth with stellar occultation, and moving out into the Solar System and further into the Milky Way and beyond. Gaia has impacted almost every field in astronomy, with data releases based mostly on its first 34 months of observations. Exciting new data is expected with Gaia's data release 4 which will cover 66 months of observations!

2023-12-14 Gaia's 10 years in space kick off with a celebratory logo

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5... days left to ESA Gaia's 10 years in space. Let's start the celebrations with this special Gaia Mission logo designed by Mariasole Agazzi and Albert Masip Vela in collaboration with Rosanna Sordo and Federico di Giacomo, members of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. More coming up in the following days... keep tuned!

2023-10-31 Gaia scanning law published for the full operational mission period

The Gaia scanning law pointings for the data collection period underlying Gaia (E)DR3 are available from the Gaia ESA Archive in a table named "gaiadr3.commanded_scan_law". Here we provide an additional and complementary data set, namely the commanded scanning law pointings over the full mission interval (from 2014-07-25 10:31:26 TCB to 2025-06-30 23:59:56 TCB), including the Ecliptic Pole Scanning at the beginning of the mission. As in the case of the Gaia (E)DR3 table, the data presented here contains the attitude as commanded in the past and as currently planned to be commanded in the future. The actually realised attitude of the spacecraft could deviate from it by up to about 30 arcsec. The time interval, in particular the end date in summer 2025, is excepted to contain the full operational mission period. Obviously, the precise end of spacecraft operations is not yet defined. Find full details here.

Selection of some interesting news from past years

full overview of news per year For operational phase can be found here:

2024    2023    2022    2021    2020    2019    2018    2017    2016    2015    2014   

Full overview of news per year for study phase / building of the spacecraft / launch can be found here:

2013    2012    2011    2010    2009    2008    2007    2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001

2023-10-13 Gaia Focused Product Release is out!

On 10 October 2023 Gaia published its Focused Product Release. On the overview page, links to all relevant information related to this release are provided. The documentation for this release is covered mostly by the Gaia Focused Product Release papers, for which links are available from the Gaia FPR papers page. The data release documentation is complementary to the papers and is available as PDF and through our webpages. Please be aware of a few known issues published for the solar system objects.

The data is available from the Gaia Archive and our partner data centres.

Full overview of the data products and their applications is given in our Gaia FPR stories. One story per data product has been published. A press release was prepared by ESA Communications and is available from this webpage. More press releases were written by Gaia DPAC institutes, these press releases are available from the Gaia FPR events page.

On 10 October and the few days following the release, several events were organized across Europe and in Brazil. Some of these events were recorded, and the recordings have been made available from our events page.

2023-08-28 Gaia DPAC Solar System Objects team honoured by the "Asteroid Comet Meteorites" Science Organization Committee

On 21 June 2023, the Asteroid Comet Meteorites SOC honoured the collaborators of the Solar System Objects (SSO) team of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. They did so with asteroid nominations, naming 4 asteroids after members of the Gaia DPAC SSO team.

• (30264) Galluccio
• (32607) Portell
• (33437) Ordenovic
• (35623) Pedrodavid

Full citation and details can be found from the last bulletin of the IAU working group for small body names.

2023-08-24 Gaia mission news

Gaia continues to operate nominally toward its 10th launch anniversary on 19 December this year. The current estimate of the remaining lifetime is about 1.5 years. In the first quarter of 2025 Gaia is expected to run out of cold gas, the gas used to maintain its highly precise scanning attitude.

Data processing performed by Gaia DPAC is progressing nominally toward Gaia DR4. The release is expected not before the end of 2025 and contains catalogues and data obtained during the first 66 months of operations.

Data processing for the final Gaia DR5 will start immediately after the end of spacecraft operations. ESA and the leading funding agencies supporting Gaia DPAC have extended the Multi-Lateral Agreement to ensure the delivery of Gaia DR5 that is anticipated not before the end of 2030.

2023-08-11 How Gaia helps measure space weather

Yesterday a story was published by ESA Enabling & Support about Solar System fingerprints found in memories of ESA flotilla. Gaia's engineering data can be used to measure the space weather at L2. A paper discussing this topic has been published: "Solar Energetic Particle Events Detected in the Housekeeping Data of the European Space Agency's Spacecraft Flotilla in the Solar System".

This composite image shows a SOHO image of the Sun and an artist's impression of Earth's magnetosphere. Source Copyright: Magnetosphere: NASA, the Sun: ESA/NASA - SOHO

2023-05-26 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.

2023-05-08 Team Achievement Award for the Gaia mission

The Gaia misson won the 2019 ESA DG Team Achievement Award. Celebrations were delayed due to the pandemic and took place today on 8 May 2023. A space mission is constructed and thought through by many people, from industry to the science community and ESA, from engineers to financial and IT. Together we make it happen!

2023-03-13 6th DPAC consortium meeting kicks off

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. Today, the 6th Gaia DPAC consortium meeting kicks off and promises to bring a full week of preparations for Gaia's Focused Product Release (planned in Q4 2023) and Gaia's Data Release 4 (not expected before the end of 2025).

2022-11-09 Gaia Collaboration to receive 2023 Berkeley Prize

The Gaia collaboration is being honored 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

2022-10-21 Three stories featuring the Gaia mission published across ESA websites

In the past two weeks, three stories featuring the Gaia mission were published across ESA websites. The first one is about stellar occultations, made possible with Gaia's exquisite star data: "Shadow hunters capture Didymos asteroid eclipsing stars" published by ESA Enabling & Support. The second one is the surprising detection of a gamma-ray burst by Gaia and many other ESA spacecraft: "ESA spacecraft catch the brightest ever gamma-ray burst" published by ESA Science & Exploration. The third one discusses near-Earth asteroids and how Gaia helps to improve their orbits: "30 000 near-Earth asteroids discovered and rising" published by ESA Space Safety.

2022-03-23 Gaia finds parts  of the Milky Way much older than expected

Using data from ESA’s Gaia mission, astronomers have shown that a part of the Milky Way known as the ‘thick disc’ began forming 13 billion years ago, around 2 billion years earlier than expected, and just 0.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Find the latest story "Gaia finds parts of the Milky Way much older than expected" on the ESA portal.

2022-02-17 Gaia reveals a new member of the Milky Way family

Latest story on esa.int: "Gaia reveals a new member of the Milky Way family".

24/11/2021 Gaia's latest story

A story on sci.esa.int was published today: Gaia reveals that most Milky Way companion galaxies are newcomers to our corner of space.

19/11/2021 With sadness we announce the passing away of Dimitri Pourbaix

It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing away of Dimitri Pourbaix on 14 November 2021. Since 2006, he was leading the Belgian participation in the Gaia data processing and analysis consortium, was member of the Gaia DPAC executive and mostly dedicated to the management of the Coordination Unit CU4. He will never see the publication of the long-awaited catalogue of binary stars for Gaia DR3, that he has so much contributed to, resolving in particular the orbits of astrometric binaries.

An online condolence register has been made available by the Institut d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique (Université Libre de Bruxelles) for anyone who wishes to post a condolence message.

25/08/2021 Gravitational Waves and the GaiaX Alert stream experiment

Interested in Gravitational Waves? Gaia intends to help out with the follow up of the Gravitational Wave triggers. An experiment with a dedicated GaiaX Alert stream will be started on 1 September 2021 and last four weeks. Find the full news item with all details here.

19/07/2021 Gaia symposium at the EAS meeting

At the EAS meeting in June an extensive preview of Gaia Data Release 3 was given at the Gaia symposium. Slides of the presentations given at this symposium can be found here.

08/03/2021 Gaia-TESS collaboration kicks off

TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is a NASA space mission surveying nearby bright stars in search of extrasolar planets, pushing ahead the fast-growing and exciting study of planets outside our solar system. TESS finds planets that cross our line of sight to their host stars, causing a periodic dimming of the observed light of the system. TESS is issuing a monthly list of newly discovered candidates of transiting exoplanets. However, TESS angular resolution allows light of each target star to be blended with the light from nearby sources. Therefore, follow-up photometric observations are required in order to exclude apparent transits caused by blending with nearby eclipsing binary stars, before further confirmation observations should be performed.

The Gaia mission has been accumulating brightness measurements of billions of stars, with a high angular resolution, producing distinct brightness time series for all sources whose light might be blended with the TESS planet-host candidate. Therefore, Gaia can quickly identify false positive candidates and even confirm true planets in some cases, synergistically combining the capabilities of two of the astronomical space flagships of the USA and Europe – TESS and Gaia.

The analysis of the Gaia relevant data is done at Tel Aviv University by Aviad Panahi, Tsevi Mazeh and Shay Zucker as members of the Gaia DPAC/CU7 team, and the results are reported to the TESS Quick Look Pipeline manager at MIT and TESS Follow-up Observing Program Working Group (TFOPWG) coordinator.

03/02/2021 Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture for Amina Helmi

The European Astronomical Society (EAS) announced yesterday that the 2021 Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture has been awarded to Prof. Amina Helmi of the University of Groningen for advancing the understanding of how the Milky Way assembled using dynamical simulations combined with Gaia observations of distances, velocities, ages and chemical abundances of stars. Amina Helmi is a member of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium and plays a role in the validation of the Gaia data.

18/12/2020 Grand Prize 2020 for Gaia

At its last session on 25 September, the Air and Space Academy (AAE) has awarded its Grand Prize 2020 to Anthony Brown, astronomer at the Leiden Observatory, and Vincent Poinsignon, Gaia satellite project manager at Airbus Defence & Space, for their decisive contribution to the success of the scientific space mission of the Gaia satellite.

 03/12/2020 Gaia Early Data Release 3 online now!

Today at 12:00 CET, the Gaia Collaboration released its Gaia Early Data Release 3 catalogue. If you are interested to follow up on some of the events, which are still ongoing, check out our events page. More information on the release can be found from the Gaia Early Data Release 3 overview page. Some stories highlighting the release have been published here.

26/11/2020 Announcement of Gaia EDR3 events

Gaia DPAC and ESA Gaia teams are happy to announce the release of Gaia EDR3 on 3 December 2020. Gaia DPAC organises virtual events in many languages and with different formats, ranging from press briefings, scientific presentations to public outreach talks. Have a look at this webpage for the complete overview.

18/11/2020 Gaia EDR3 source code

Some source code accompanies the Gaia EDR3 papers. The description of the code and info on where to find the code is available from this page.

02/11/2020 International Astronomical Union - Focus meeting 7

At the IAU General Assembly XXXI in Busan, Rep. of Korea, a focus meeting will be held on "Astrometry for 21st century astronomy". The IAU General Assembly will take place from 16 to 27 August 2021. The precise dates for the Focus Meeting 7 will be announced later.

29/10/2020 Gaia EDR3 passbands

To allow the scientific community to prepare, the Gaia EDR3 passbands are shared in advance of the Gaia Early Data Release 3, which is expected to go public on 3 December 2020 at 12:00 CET.

20/10/2020 Lennart Lindegren and Jackie Faherty awarded prizes for dynamical astronomy

We are pleased to announce that Lennart Lindegren and Jackie Faherty were awarded prizes by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Division on Dynamical Astronomy (DDA). Lennart was awarded the 2020 Dirk Brouwer Career Award, and Jackie Faherty won the 2020 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize. Find here more information on the prizes and this news.

07/09/2020 Gaia EDR3 release date fixed

We have fixed the Gaia EDR3 release date to 3 December 2020 (at 12:00 CET). All data has been produced and the validation is currently underway. The contents of Gaia EDR3 can be found from this page and an overview page will provide further details of the release as it becomes available. Although the pandemic continues to complicate and slow down the progress toward Gaia DR3, the release is expected to take place during the first half of 2022. An overview of the contents of Gaia DR3 can be found from the data release scenario page.

19/08/2020 Podcast with Anthony Brown

Find here a podcast interview with our Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium chair: Anthony Brown.

07/05/2020 Gaps in Gaia DR2 data

A description and overview of gaps in the data stream that underlies the Gaia DR2 data products can be found here.

25/04/2020 Gaia DR2 - second anniversary

Today the Gaia Mission celebrates the second anniversary of Gaia Data Release 2. The Gaia catalogues have been embraced by many scientists across the world. Today, we are proud of the many papers that appeared using our latest release, Gaia DR2. In the past 2 years, almost 3000 refereed papers based on Gaia Data Release 2 have been published. That amounts on average to 4 papers per day. Thank you for using our data with so much enthusiasm! In the meantime, ESA Gaia teams and Gaia DPAC are continuously working towards next data releases. Keep posted with our Gaia newsletter of upcoming releases.

Gaia's first release came out on 14 September 2016. On 25 April 2018, the Gaia Collaboration published its second date release.

06/03/2020 Gaia's latest science stories

Milky Way's warp caused by Galactic collision, Gaia suggests: Astronomers have pondered for years why our galaxy, the Milky Way, is warped. Data from ESA's star-mapping satellite Gaia suggest the distortion might be caused by an ongoing collision with another, smaller, galaxy, which sends ripples through the galactic disc like a rock thrown into water. Further reading here.

Global Gaia campaign reveals secrets of stellar pair: A 500-day global observation campaign spearheaded more than three years ago by ESA’s galaxy-mapping powerhouse Gaia has provided unprecedented insights into the binary system of stars that caused an unusual brightening of an even more distant star. Further reading here.

12/12/2019 Sampling of the Gaia scanning law now available

Today the sampling of the Gaia scanning law over the 22 month time period covered by the Gaia Data Release 2, including the Ecliptic Pole Scanning at the begin of the mission, is made available from the Gaia Auxiliary Data webpage. Note that this is the commanded attitude of the spacecraft, the actual attitude could deviate from it by up to about 30 arcsec. Find more details here.

Below you can see a visualisation of how Gaia scanned the sky during its first 14 months of operations, so for the time period covered by Gaia Data Release1.

09/12/2019 Release of the Gaia DR2 primer

The Gaia Helpdesk is happy to announce the release of the Gaia DR2 primer "Everything you wish you had known before you started working with Gaia Data Release 2". This primer collects all information, tips and tricks, pitfalls, caveats, and recommendations relevant to Gaia’s second data release in one place and provides pointers to where more detailed information can be found. It is aimed at astronomers interested in using Gaia DR2 data, including undergraduates and PhD students.

24/10/2019 Gaia astronomical revolution

The Gaia Data Release 2 catalogues has been used extensively by astronomers across the world. About 3 to 4 papers appear per day based on the Gaia DR2 catalogue, touching many different topics.

26/09/2019 Update to the Gaia data release scenario

Data processing toward Gaia (E)DR3 continues to progress within the announced schedule. However, to ensure sufficient quality of the quasars and extended objects results, an additional processing run has to be scheduled moving their outcome from Gaia EDR3 to Gaia DR3. Another modification concerns a new data product. A pencil beam survey with (integrated) epoch photometry of all sources (variable and non-variable) will be added to Gaia DR3. The selected field is centred on the Andromeda Galaxy. The cone with 5.5 degree radius contains in total about 1 million sources both in M31 and the Milky Way. In order not to impact the release schedule, only a limited amount of explicit validation will be done on the pencil beam epoch photometry.

28/08/2019 Gaia untangles the starry strings of the Milky Way

A new story was published today discussing science findings from Gaia's second data release: "Gaia untangles the starry strings of the Milky Way".

22/08/2019  Gaia DR2 known issue

An update to the Gaia DR2 known issues page became available today, discussing systematic effects in the Gaia DR2 parallaxes for very bright stars.

17/07/2019 Gaia moves into mission extension

Yesterday a major manoeuvre took place to ensure Gaia would keep out of Earth's shadow for the coming years. This manoeuvre, called the Whitehead Eclipse Avoidance Manoeuvre, also marks the transition of the Gaia mission into its first mission extension. Congratulations to the Gaia team at ESOC for the great achievement yesterday!

24/06/2019 NWO Spinoza prize for our Gaia DPAC member Amina Helmi

The NWO Spinoza Prize, which is the highest award in Dutch science, was awarded to several researchers working in the Netherlands who belong to the absolute top of science and have done groundbreaking research. Amina Helmi is one of the NWO Spinoza Laureates for her work on the Dynamics, Structure and Formation of the Milky Way at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen. She is part of Coordination Unit 9 in the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium and participates in the validation of the Gaia data.

23/05/2019 Lorenzoni Prize 2019 for Gaia DPAC member Eloisa Poggio

The Lorenzoni Prize is an award instituted by the Societa' Astronomica Italiana (SAIt) with the sponsorship of "Officina Stellare" (an Italian manufacturing company in the field of design and construction of telescopes and precision opto-mechanical instrumentation for professional applications for scientific research, aerospace and defense) to reward the best scientific article published by a young researcher in the last 3 years.

This year the Lorenzoni Prize was won by Eloisa Poggio, a young researcher that has published the paper "The Galactic warp revealed by Gaia DR2 kinematics". This paper using Gaia DR2 data reveals that the warp of the Milky Way is a gravitationally induced phenomenon. She was awarded with her prize during the SAIt national meeting that was held in Rome on 16 May 2019.

25/04/2019 Geographic contributions to DPAC

Today marks the first birthday of our Gaia Data Release 2, a data release that truly changed our view of the Milky Way. We'd like to celebrate this day with a special thank you to all the people involved in all stages of Gaia's life: from initial proposal, to gathering interest, to design and building and actual operating of the spacecraft. From getting the data down, checking the health of the data, to processing the raw data into a scientifically usable format and then validating to make sure the data is truly that great!

In the image released today you can see the geographic contributions to the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. It shows the countries where the people in DPAC are working. Read further on Gaia DPAC and its contribution to Gaia Data Release 2 in our newest story available here.

18/04/2019 Summary of the 53rd ESLAB symposium

From 8-12 April 2019, the 53rd ESLAB symposium took place at ESTEC, The Netherlands. A summary of the results shown at the symposium can be found here.

07/04/2019 Rethinking everything we know about star clusters

Recently an overview article appeared on ESA Science & Technology discussing the role of Gaia in our knowledge of star clusters. By studying stellar clusters, Gaia reveals much about the formation and evolution of stars in our surroundings. Read the full article here.

22/02/2019 Update to the Gaia DR2 known issues

Today an update to the Gaia DR2 known issues was published discussing Gaia DR2 photometry. We advise you to read through this topic if you use Gaia DR2 photometry.

31/01/2019 Update to Gaia DR2 known issues page on radial velocities

Today on ArXiv a paper appeared by Boubert et al.  describing potential contamination of radial velocities in crowded regions. A summary has been added to our Gaia DR2 Known Issues page, along with links to the paper and the accompanying data. The page also describes other topics like astrometry and crossmatches, and complements the Gaia DR2 data release documentation.

29/01/2019 Gaia Data Release 3 split into two parts

The Gaia data processing toward Gaia DR3 is progressing at full speed. Although the schedule has stabilised, there are several uncertainties as many elements of the pipelines will see the real data in an operational environment for the first time. Taking the uncertainties into account brought the schedule of the next release toward the end of the earlier announced period of the first half of 2021.

To mitigate the impact on research, the Gaia DR3 will be split into two releases. This way, data that is ready earlier, will be released earlier. The early release, Gaia EDR3, contains astrometry and (integrated) photometry i.e. positions, parallaxes, proper motions, G-band fluxes as well as integrated red- (RP) and blue-band (BP) fluxes, all based on 34 months of data resulting in better accuracy with respect to Gaia DR2. First results for a predefined list of quasars and extended objects may also be included already in the early release. Gaia EDR3 will take place in Q3 of 2020.

Gaia DR3, which is anticipated to take place during the second half of 2021, will supersede Gaia EDR3. This means that the source list and any data published in Gaia EDR3 will not change, but is simply copied to Gaia DR3. Therefore Gaia DR3 is based on the same 34 months of mission data as for Gaia EDR3. The additional products include:
- radial velocities (significantly more due to fainter magnitude limit),
- BP/RP/RVS spectra (new products),
- Solar system data (significantly more sources included),
- variability information (significantly more objects due to longer time interval),
- results for non-single stars (new products), and
- astrophysical parameters (based on spectra).
The final inclusion of the products into Gaia DR3, as well as Gaia EDR3, is subject to successful validation.