Parallel sessions

The ESA Gaia mission is creating a 3-D map of over two billion stars in our Milky Way. Gaia Early Data Release 3 was issued December 2020 with the full third release (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data-release-3) to follow in Q2/2022. Hence the next Gaia Data Release 3 will have been released shortly before the NAM2022 meeting and this session will be extremely timely.

Our parallel session will provide an introduction and status to the Gaia mission, an overview of the Gaia DR3 catalogue contents including scientific quality and practical information on how to handle and access them from the Gaia archive for science research. Information will also be given on the future availability of an advanced science data platform that will provide powerful capabilities in user access and manipulation to the bulk Gaia data. The session will also provide a longer term look ahead as to what to expect from the fourth Gaia data release. Sessions will include a range of presentations describing the Gaia DR3 contents, how to access the Gaia DR3 data through the ESA Gaia Archive and partner archives, use of VO tools such as TOPCAT to analyse the Gaia DR3 data, and a detailed discussion of the Gaia DR3 data, including caveats with the data. We note that the DR3 release sees a significant new range of data products including: object classification for nearly all objects and astrophysical parameters for about 500 million objects; BP/RP spectra for at least 100 million sources with G < 17.6 mag; RVS spectra for about 1 million well-behaved objects and mean radial velocities for about 33 million stars with GRVS <~ 14 mag and an effective temperature (Teff) in the range of about 3100 to 14,500 K.