News 2022

2022-12-21 Gaia XPloration, announcement of a Gaia XP workshop

21 December 2022 From 15 to 19 May 2023 the first meeting on the Gaia XP low resolution spectra, organized also by members the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, will be held in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop is to bring together DPAC members and the scientific community that benifits from the Gaia data, to discuss how to use the XP spectra,... read more

2022-12-09 Vacancy for a Gaia position in Dresden

9 December 2022 The Lohrmann Observatory, Technische Universität Dresden invites applications for a position of Research Associate to work for Gaia science and data processing within Gaia DPAC (Data Processing and Analysis Consortium). More information can be found here in the vacancy description PDF. read more

2022-11-17 Gaia Photometric Science Alerts at risk

17 November 2022 The Gaia Photometric Science Alerts consists of a pipeline feeding candidate transients into a web portal. This allows the community to follow up on potentially interesting events seen by Gaia immediately following observations taken. Currently, these Gaia Alerts are at risk due to a combination of factors. More info can be found from the news... read more

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

9 November 2022 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... read more

2022-11-08 Internship positions with the Gaia mission

8 November 2022 The 2023 internship opportunities at ESA have been published. Among them, three internship positions with the Gaia mission opened up: Internship in the Science and Operations Department at ESTEC (Noordwijk, The Netherlands) on science communication and visualisation (See the first opportunity mentioned there) Internship in the Science... read more

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

21 October 2022 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... read more

2022-10-10 Gaia DR3 known issue affecting 2 sources in gaiadr3.gold_sample_spss

10 October 2022 Please be alerted of the new known issue affecting 2 source_ids of sources from the Gaia golden sample of astrophysical parameters. The known issue is given here for convenience, but can also be found on this page. read more

2022-09-28 Updates to the Gaia science performance pages

28 September 2022 The Gaia science performance pages have been updated following Gaia's data release 3. Now also the photometric and spectroscopic science performance have been updated with indication for the performance of Gaia DR4 and Gaia DR5. read more

Gaia Newsletter #23

28 September 2022 Gaia's newsletter #23 is out now read more

2022-09-28 ESA research fellowships in Space Sciences

28 September 2022 The call for European Space Agency's Research Fellowships in Space Science has been opened. The deadline for applications is 19 September 2022. EXTENDED DEADLINE = 7 October read more

2022-09-27 Future Gaia Data releases

27 September 2022 The Gaia Data Release 3 (Gaia DR3) released 13 June 2022 covered 34 months of data. Already before this milestone, the processing for future releases had been proceeding. Gaia Data Release 4 (Gaia DR4) will cover 66 months of observations including all data from the nominal mission. In the current schedule the Gaia DR4 is anticipated to take... read more

2022-09-23 Shaw prize award ceremony 2022

23 September 2022 In May 2022, it was announced that the Shaw Prize in Astronomy was awarded to Lennart Lindegren and Michael Perryman, for their "lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions." read more

2022-09-08 ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme

8 September 2022 To increase the scientific return from its Space Science missions, the European Space Agency 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 with... read more

2022-08-11 Gaia reveals the past and future of the Sun

11 August 2022 Published now on esa.int/gaia a new story on Gaia's solar analogues, giving insight in the possible past and future of the Sun. read more

2022-06-24 Gaia DR3 known issue on planetary transits

24 June 2022 The Gaia DR3 table named vari_planetary_transit contains information on the period and other properties (transit reference time, depth, duration, etc.) of 41 new planetary transit candidates and 173 known exoplanets (Eyer et al. 2022, Panahi et al. 2022). The data in this table contain serious errors and users are advised not to use them. A... read more

2022-06-23 Gaia DPAC CU8 webinar

23 June 2022 Gaia Data Release 3 contains a wealth of new data products for the community. Astrophysical parameters are a major component of this release. They were produced by the Astrophysical parameters inference system (Apsis) within the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. This presentation gives an overview of the over 40 different parameters... read more

2022-06-07 Jupiter’s moon Europa to obscure distant star

7 June 2022 Latest story published by ESA on the stellar occultation by Europa on 19 June 2022. More details can be found here: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Jupiter_s_moon_Europa_to_obscure_distant_star. read more

2022-06-07 Publication of Gaia DR3 help pages

7 June 2022 In preparation of Gaia’s third data release (Gaia DR3), scheduled for 13 June at 12:00 CEST, today sees the publication of the renewed help pages of Gaia ESA Archive. Whereas the Gaia Archive is currently offline to prepare for Gaia DR3, users are welcome to familiarise themselves with the new help content, including new tutorials and new... read more

2022-06-01 GaiaUnlimited Community Workshop

1 June 2022 From September 13 to 15 2022 the first GaiaUnlimited community workshop will take place in Heidelberg, Germany. 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... read more

2022-05-31 Media invitation for Gaia DR3 press briefing

31 May 2022 ESA published today its invitation to the media for the Gaia DR3 press briefing on 13 June between 10:00 and 11:00 CEST. A media kit detailing the contents of the release has been published as well. read more

2022-05-25 Shaw prize for Lennart Lindegren and Michael Perryman

25 May 2022 Yesterday, it was announced that the Shaw Prize in Astronomy was awarded to Lennart Lindegren and Michael Perryman, for their "lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions." "The Shaw Prize was established by Mr. Run Run Shaw... read more

2022-05-20 Gaia DR3 events page goes live!

21 May 2022 Many events are organised to introduce the Gaia Data Release 3 to the community. The Gaia DR3 events page also contains details on the central ESA/Gaia/DPAC press event which will be streamed on ESA WebTV. Next to a central ESA/Gaia/DPAC briefing at 10:00 CEST on 13 June, there will be events in Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Finland, France,... read more

2022-05-20 Gaia newsletter #20 is available now.

20 May 2022 Find the latest Gaia Newsletter in your inbox now. read more

2022-05-04 Gaia Newsletter #19 is out

4 May 2022 ​​​​​​​The latest newsletter from Gaia provides you with lots of details on the upcoming data release 3. read more

2022-05-02 Update to the Gaia DR3 contents summary page

2 May 2022 On 28 March an update to the Gaia DR3 contents page was published, giving lots more details on the different data products to be expected in Gaia's full data release 3. Find below the overview table taken from this page. To help prepare for the data release, also find the draft data model now published on this page. At last, a warning that the... read more

2022-04-28 Publication of the Gaia CRF3 cross match table

28 April 2022 A downloadable table providing the location of each of the Gaia CRF3 sources that define the Gaia Celestial Reference Frame has been published today on the Gaia DR3 auxiliary data page. The Gaia Collaboration paper "Gaia Early Data Release 3: The celestial reference frame (Gaia-CRF3) can be found here. read more

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

23 March 2022 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. read more

2022-03-11 Extended downtime expected for the Gaia Archive

11 March 2022 To allow for some maintenance to the Gaia Archive, an extended downtime is expected from Friday 18 March 2022 at 17:00 CET until Monday 21 March 2022 at 19:00 CET. Please prepare accordingly. Gaia data is also served from the Gaia partner data centres. read more

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

11 March 2022 Latest story on esa.int: "Gaia reveals a new member of the Milky Way family". read more

2022-02-07 Gaia Data Release 3 expected on 13 June 2022

7 February 2022 The Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium and ESA are pleased to announce that Gaia Data Release 3 will be published on Monday 13 June 2022 at 12:00 CEST. A full overview of related webpages and content is given from the Gaia Data Release 3 overview page. A snapshot of the contents can be found on this page, which will be updated closer... read more

2022-02-04 Vacancy at the Lohrmann Observatory in Dresden

7 February 2022 The Lohrmann Observatory, Technische Universität Dresden invites applications for a position of Research Associate to work for Gaia science and data processing within Gaia DPAC (Data Processing and Analysis Consortium). The position is currently funded until 31 December 2025. More information can be found here. read more