The images on the poster contain star density maps of the Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars. A bandwidth was chosen of 3 parsecs. This choice allows to make the known over density around the Ursa Major moving group visible. The map shows the regions associated with sigma 3, 4 and 5.
Given the Gaia Catalogue does not contain the brightest stars, for these images, the brightest stars were added. The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars was supplemented with a total of about 4,400 stars with high absolute magnitude (< 3). The density images were created using the full Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars alone.
View the image (JPG, 1.2 MB.)
Download the "Solar Neighbourhood from Gaia" poster (PDF, 32 MB).
You can find some background material as produced by the same creator using a similar technique, but on Gaia DR2 data, at http://gruze.org/galaxymap/map_800pc/no_stars.html
Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. Image released under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Acknowledgement: These images were created by Kevin Jardine (@galaxy_map on twitter), with help on the bandwidth selection from Ronald Drimmel. The data used for this visualisation was provided by the authors of the paper: Gaia Early Data Release 3: the Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars, by Gaia Collaboration, R.L. Smart, et al. 2020 A&A.
Page last updated: 03 December 2020