Gaia Data Release 3: Catalogue Validation

Abstract

Context. The third Gaia data release (DR3) provides a wealth of new data products. The early part of the release, Gaia EDR3, already provided the astrometric and photometric data for nearly two billion sources. The full release now adds improved parameters compared to Gaia DR2 for radial velocities, astrophysical parameters, variability information, light curves, and orbits for Solar System objects. The improvements are in terms of the number of sources, the variety of parameter information, precision, and accuracy. For the first time, Gaia DR3 also provides a sample of spectrophotometry and spectra obtained with the Radial Velocity Spectrometer, binary star solutions, and a characterisation of extragalactic object candidates. Aims. Before the publication of the catalogue, these data have undergone a dedicated transversal validation process. The aim of this paper is to highlight limitations of the data that were found during this process and to provide recommendations for the usage of the catalogue. Methods. The validation was obtained through a statistical analysis of the data, a confirmation of the internal consistency of different products, and a comparison of the values to external data or models. Results. Gaia DR3 is a new major step forward in terms of the number, diversity, precision, and accuracy of the Gaia products. As always in such a large and complex catalogue, however, issues and limitations have also been found. Detailed examples of the scientific quality of the Gaia DR3 release can be found in the accompanying data-processing papers as well as in the performance verification papers. Here we focus only on the caveats that the user should be aware of to scientifically exploit the data.

GaiaData Release 3

“…A third level of validation was then performed by the Coordination Unit 9 (CU9) archive team once the operational data had been delivered. The CU9 archive team were the first users of the data, and had an external view of the full results in the archive just as a user would; see Babusiaux et al (2022). Once the CU8 results were final, the validation by CU9 only allowed us to perform minor updates on parameters through post-processing, for example removing results for some sources or removing fields from the Gaia archive.…”

“…Unfortunately, as illustrated in Fig. 6, notable long-range correlations between pixels do exist in BP and RP spectra (see Babusiaux et al 2022). Ignoring these correlations therefore causes several Apsis modules to systematically underestimate the uncertainties in their parameters, although most modules have inflated their uncertainties to account for this effect.…”

A pilot ASKAP survey for radio transients towards the Galactic Centre

“…For each source, we searched for archival detections in previous radio surveys including the quick look images from the Karl G. Condon et al 1998) and the second epoch Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2; Murphy et al 2007). We also searched for optical or infrared counterparts in Gaia DR3 (Babusiaux et al 2022), SkyMapper (Wolf et al 2018Onken et al 2019), VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV; Minniti et al 2010), the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer catalogue (WISE; Cutri & et al 2012) and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; Skrutskie et al 2006). We discuss these sources individually below.…”

Mass–Velocity Dispersion Relation by Using the Gaia Data and Its Effect on Interpreting Short-duration and Degenerate Microlensing Events

“…We use the Gaia data to obtain the distribution of stars in the Milky Way. We take a large ensemble from the Gaia archive 4 (Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3); Gaia Collaboration et al 2016Collaboration et al , 2021Babusiaux et al 2022). These stars are (a) closer than 150 pc, (b) brighter than 21 mag in the G band (as these stars make a complete sample), and (c) additionally, their temperature, luminosity, mass, age, and their velocity components in the heliocentric frame have been measured.…”