Questions tagged [gaia]

Questions about the space observatory GAIA.

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2 votes
1 answer
51 views

How can I get a list of the closest x stars and their distances from the Gaia ESA Archive using Python?

I've been trying to find this out for a while now, but I'm making zero progress. I really struggle to find good documentation for the query language, and even in the astroquery library I can't find ...
2 votes
0 answers
34 views

Computing the sky coordinates using astropy

I need your help with an error I have been receiving while trying to obtain the sky coordinates using astropy module in python. The code looks like the following, ...
1 vote
1 answer
51 views

Which catalogue has identified objects from Gaia DR3?

I am trying to match objects from a Gaia DR3 dataset having 1 million rows with simbad. I find it difficult to find object type for all the rows as queries using astroquery becomes insanely slow after ...
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1 vote
1 answer
64 views

How do I get cross-verification data for Gaia DR3?

I've collected data having 1 million rows of Gaia DR3. I am trying to make a dataset suitable for Machine Learning. I need a target variable which is the stellar object type. My issue is I can't seem ...
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1 vote
1 answer
50 views

Classifying stars using GEDR3

Is there a way to take the Gaia Early Data Release 3 dataset and calculate a likely star size (radius and mass) (units not relevant), and emission spectra (hydrogen, helium) or light color? Please ...
2 votes
1 answer
67 views

Need help in writing a query using ADQL (Astronomical Data Query Language)

I am trying to query Gaia archive to get the medium quality sample as mentioned in Reico-Blanco et al. (2022) Gaia Data Release 3: Chemical cartography of the Milky Way. The idea is to query the ...
2 votes
1 answer
68 views

What criteria determines whether stars are supernova type II candidates?

I want to find supernova candidates by using the Gaia catalog in 300 parsec (near Earth). I though they must be red super giants so they are cooler than 4100 K and more luminous than 104 solar ...
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3 votes
1 answer
88 views

What is the goal of predicting gravitational microlensing?

I know that gravitational lensing is a geometric effect that occurs when light changes direction because a massive object causes space-time to warp and consequently the radiation rays change the path ...
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5 votes
1 answer
203 views

How many stars can we resolve?

Wikipedia estimates the number of stars in the Milky Way at 100 to 400 billion. One of our most ambitious astrometry projects, Gaia, has been able to resolve and map almost 2 billion stars in the ...
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5 votes
1 answer
92 views

Is there a simple way to get $T_{\mathit{eff}}$ estimates for Gaia EDR3?

For just hobbyist purposes (3D starmap) - I'm trying to infer temperature from EDR3 data to make a rough assessment of stellar type. I tried applying figure 2 from this doc: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1008....
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6 votes
2 answers
1k views

How can I convert a GAIA-magnitude "G" to Johnson "V"?

Question: How can I convert the Gaia-magnitude G (and G_ESTIMATE) into a V-magnitude? The solution probably can be found in the Gaia Data Release Documentation for Gaia's EDR3 ("Early Data ...
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2 votes
2 answers
308 views

Downloadable GCNS (Gaia Catalog of Nearby Stars)

Has Gaia made the "Gaia Catalog of Nearby Stars" (GCNS) available for offline processing? Ideally I'd like the full 100pc data set in a format that doesn't require any specialized libraries ...
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1 vote
1 answer
53 views

How many asteroids were discovered via GAIA? Is there a list?

The ESA Science & Technology video Gaia's asteroid discoveries shows trajectories for hundreds of asteroids that were seen by GAIA, but as far as I can deduce from the extensive notes there, only ...
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3 votes
1 answer
612 views

Query Gaia by star name

I am attempting to query Gaia programmatically in python to get certain properties for specific stars. I can write a query which obtains some properties, but only for all stars, not a set of stars or ...
2 votes
1 answer
102 views

Extracting specific star data from Gaia DR2?

I would like to extract all Gaia DR2 sources which have six-parameter solutions as well as their radial velocities and effective temperatures. Is this possible as DR2 only specifies that there are 1,...
2 votes
0 answers
36 views

Did Gaia DR3 help figure out whether Albireo is an optical double?

Based on the Wikipedia page of Albireo, Gaia DR2 had too much noise to determine whether the stars are physically associated or if they are just an optical double. Gaia DR3 was released last year. ...
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1 vote
0 answers
132 views

Relationships between G magnitude, Johnson V magnitude, and spectral type of stars?

I'm simulating a population of binary stars for a summer research project. I'm adding uncertainties to my simulated observables such as angular position and radial (line of sight) velocity. I'm using ...
2 votes
1 answer
103 views

What was the first use of time-delay integration in Astronomy? Are there instances before GAIA?

In the context of GAIA, time-delay integration is the clocking of a CCD's charge shift register at a frequency such that it matches the linear speed across the focal plane of the actual image. So even ...
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1 vote
1 answer
487 views

Query with Gaia: I have a list of 1000+ source_id's. How do I find the associated stars and their data?

I have a table of around 1700 source id's from gaiadr2 (in csv format). I would like to see the data that Gaia has for each star in a new table. I'm really struggling to figure out how to do this ...
3 votes
1 answer
166 views

Is GAIA the only game in town for looking at quadrupole gravitational deflection of light?

From Gerry Gilmore (2018) Gaia: 3-dimensional census of the Milky Way Galaxy 4.4 Fundamental physics Relativistic effects are highly significant for Gaia measurement accuracy, with tests of General ...
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5 votes
1 answer
181 views

Has GAIA learned anything about General Relativity looking near Jupiter? (Gerry Gilmore: "oblate rotating mass moving in a deeper (Solar) potential")

From Gerry Gilmore (2018) Gaia: 3-dimensional census of the Milky Way Galaxy 4.4 Fundamental physics Relativistic effects are highly significant for Gaia measurement accuracy, with tests of General ...
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8 votes
2 answers
787 views

Why (the heck) is the basic angle of GAIA 106.5°?

This answer to Why does the Gaia space telescope have two main mirrors says: According to the GAIA FAQs which does an excellent job: http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/faqs: Why is there an angle of ...
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3 votes
1 answer
120 views

What would "the next GAIA"-like instrument be like? Could it simply be a 3 to 5x scaled-up version of the same beautiful system?

This excellent, thorough and well-sourced answer to Has a gravitational microlensing event ever been predicted? If so, has it been observed? mentions several works where hundreds to thousands of ...
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1 vote
0 answers
31 views

How to explain tidal tails and dark matter sub-halos in simple terms?

There is the exciting news by ESA entitled Is the nearest star cluster to the Sun being destroyed? Data from ESA’s Gaia star mapping satellite have revealed tantalising evidence that the nearest ...
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0 votes
1 answer
862 views

How to convert Proper Motion in RA & Dec to Galactic Coordinates

I'm trying to parse stellar data in the GAIA 2 release to galactic coordinates and am struggling with the velocity component. I've tried following online documentation and papers, but end up with ...
0 votes
0 answers
58 views

Why can't ESA/NASA build a handful of Gaia telescopes and launch them into different positions in space for better accuracy?

I've noticed that many stars in GAIA DR2 have highly uncertain distances. Why can't a space agency send multiple Gaia spacecraft into orbit around different places (One in L2 Earth, one in ...
3 votes
1 answer
329 views

Approximate spectral type and luminosity given apparent magnitude and distance

I am looking at the data acquired from the Gaia DR2 survey. I found that most of the stars had their distance and apparent magnitude catalogued, but not their spectral type and luminosity class. Is ...
2 votes
1 answer
155 views

How precisely we know the Gaia spacecraft baseline? [Question related to Planet 9 and the cosmic distance ladder]

The European Space Agency mission Gaia is performing an outstanding job by measuring the parallaxes of almost 2 billion stars, many of which are thousands of light years away from the Sun. For this ...
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6 votes
2 answers
2k views

How can I calculate the uncertainties in magnitude like the CDS does?

When you check an entry of the Gaia DR2 stellar catalogue in Vizier, for example this one, you can see that there is a value for the G magnitude (in our case 18.0733 mag) and a value for the ...
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4 votes
1 answer
137 views

How do OGLE-III and GAIA measure the mass of free microlensing black holes?

What is the "hypothesized lower mass gap" between 2.5 and 5 solar masses? eventually links to Constraining the masses of microlensing black holes and the mass gap with Gaia DR2. The angle of ...
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1 vote
1 answer
347 views

What does correcting for LSR mean in galactic velocities?

This is a two-part question, but both parts are related: I'm aware that modern astronomical software can correct velocities for the local standard of rest (LSR), but what does that really mean? As in,...
5 votes
1 answer
187 views

What is the overlap between the Gaia and the Hipparcos catalog?

Is there any kind of concordance available between the sources in the Hipparcos catalog and the Gaia DR2 catalog? I.e., mapping the Gaia DR2 source_id to the Hipparcos HIP number?
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4 votes
1 answer
687 views

Distance to Proxima Centauri (Gaia VS New Horizons parallax program)

The current best parallax measurement for the nearest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, has been given by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission. This is $768.5004\; \pm \; 0.2030 \; mas$ (...
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14 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why not send a Gaia-like mission to Mars?

This answer to the question why we didn't send Gaia to Neptune's orbit raises the question of why we don't send a Gaia-like mission to the orbit of Mars. It seems like it doesn't have the problems ...
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46 votes
5 answers
9k views

Why is Gaia operating around Earth orbit? Why not send it to Neptune's orbit?

Gaia is an astrometry spacecraft that's currently operating around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point. Question: why here? Why not the Sun-Neptune L2 Lagrangian point? By orbiting the Sun at a larger ...
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3 votes
0 answers
66 views

Why is it hard to reconcile Gaia DR2 with the HIP data set

I'm trying to get a database of about 20 million of the brightest stars in the sky for a project I'm working on, and I want to reconcile it with the Hipparcos data set. Currently, I'm only using the ...
4 votes
1 answer
615 views

Fits file re-alignment

I would like to re-align an image using a reference image (taken from GAIA). I am aware of the software Koords developed by the Karma team: https://www.atnf.csiro.au/computing/software/karma/ ...
5 votes
1 answer
897 views

Obtaining TESS input catalog (TIC) IDs for Gaia `source_ids`?

The TESS input catalog (TIC) "uses the GAIA DR2 catalog as a base" according to the catalog's website. The Gaia DR2 database provides source_ids for each ...
1 vote
1 answer
329 views

How can GAIA's accuracy for position, parallax, and annual proper motion for a given star be the same number?

Per Wikipedia's Gaia (spacecraft); Objectives: Determine the position, parallax, and annual proper motion of 1 billion stars with an accuracy of about 20 microarcseconds (µas) at 15 mag, and 200 ...
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2 votes
1 answer
59 views

What has GAIA found out about the dwarf galaxy heritage of stars in the Milky Way, if anything?

I ran across the image below in the August 2000 ESA Bulletin # 103 GAIA – Unravelling the Origin and Evolution of Our Galaxy Figure 3. This simulation shows how a galaxy halo, like our own, may ...
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11 votes
3 answers
265 views

Is there an optimum orbit for a Hipparcos/Gaia-like parallax observatory

The Gaia spacecraft is currently mapping the stars in the Milky Way by parallax. It orbits in the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point. The parallax observed from the spacecraft orbiting around the sun allows ...
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1 vote
0 answers
163 views

Plotting GAIA barycentric radial velocity data with python

Does anybody know of a good tutorial on how to use python and astropy to generate plots of GAIA, RAVE or any other database of barycentric (heliocentric) radial velocity data of stars in our galaxy? ...
4 votes
1 answer
300 views

Why no Polaris distance in GAIA DR2?

Querying GAIA DR2 for Polaris (for example using https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/) yields empty parallax columns. Anyone knows why it was not measured/published?
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2 votes
0 answers
145 views

How to calculate the various properties of a star?

I am wanting to plot a velocity profile (a plot of velocity against the star's distance from the galactic core) from the Gaia DR2, but so far my efforts have been disappointing. The information I ...
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Gaia Gbp - Grp: why does it get larger as star gets redder?

As an enthusiastic amateur scientist, I'm plowing my way through a cool Gaia DR2-based paper, "An Empirical Measurement of the Initial-Final Mass Relation with Gaia White Dwarfs". I'm doing all right, ...
11 votes
4 answers
4k views

What is the proper interpretation of a negative parallax?

The Gaia data release 2 dataset has some parallaxes listed as negative. What is the proper interpretation of this? Should they be discarded as bad data? Use their absolute value to calculate the ...
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4 votes
1 answer
437 views

Very near GAIA DR2 sources - has Proxima Centauri been dethroned?

I made an extract of GAIA DR2 data for parallaxes greater than 500mas. Surprisingly I see a very significant number of sources with parallax greater that 1000, making them much closer than Proxima. ...
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2 votes
2 answers
189 views

How many GAIA Data Release 2 files are there?

I am using this index page to download GDR2 data files. http://cdn.gea.esac.esa.int/Gaia/gdr2/gaia_source/csv/ But it keeps giving a different number of links. Sometimes it shows 16,000 files, ...
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2 votes
0 answers
216 views

Open cluster membership determination via parallaxes

I'm working in my final course project and I'm using the recently released GAIA DR2 data. I want to determine open clusters membership and I know this has mainly been done using proper motions and ...
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2 votes
1 answer
85 views

How is interstellar gas density mapped from GAIA data?

I found the image below in Space.com's article This 3D Color Map of 1.7 Billion Stars in the Milky Way Is the Best Ever Made. The caption for this image reads: The Gaia spacecraft gathered ...
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