ESA Gaia Science Community - Gaia

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Gaia news & highlights

2023-05-26 Gaia Focused Product Release planned for 10 October 2023

26 May 2023Gaia'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...

2023-05-18 Mapping the Milky Way

18 May 2023A renaissance in Galactic studies is well underway, in no small part due to the contributions deriving from the data releases of the Gaia mission, which has become the most cited astrophysics space mission to date. This renaissance is not only thanks to Gaia, but also to astrometric and photometric surveys made at other wavelengths, from the...

2023-05-15 Goonhilly station steps in to save Gaia science data

15 May 2023The Gaia mission uses the ESA deep space network (DSN) ground stations for communicating with the spacecraft. These stations are shared with other missions such as Mars Express, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, Solar Orbiter and BepiColombo, and are in high demand. Sometimes the available station tracking time is not sufficient for Gaia’s needs and...

2023-05-10 GaiaUnlimited Community workshop in October

10 May 2023From 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...

2023-05-05 Known issue on two false-positive sources in the astrometric binary solutions.

10 May 2023During 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...

2023-04-25 The Gaia ESA Archive

25 April 2023Today, 25 April 2023, marks the fifth anniversary of the second Gaia Data Release (Gaia DR2). Gaia DR2 was revolutionary including more than 1300 million sources with five-parameter astrometry (position, parallax, and proper motion) as well as G, GBP, and GRP mean photometry, more than 7 million sources with radial velocities, more than half a...

2023-04-05 Dual quasar found to be hosted by an ongoing galaxy merger at redshift 2.17

5 April 2023Today, a Hubble Space Telescope news item reveals follow-up investigations on one of Gaia's dual quasar candidates. Initially, the source (J0749+2255) was identified as a quasar in the SDSS Legacy Survey. After Gaia's Data Release 2, with the use of Gaia's accurate astrometry, the source turned out to be part of a list of candidate dual quasars....

2023-04-04 Archival Research Visitor Programme

4 April 2023To increase the scientific return from its space science missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research projects based on data publicly available in the ESA Space Science Archives. The ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme is open to scientists, at all career levels, affiliated...