Gaia's Focused Product Release was released on Tuesday 10 October 2023. The data is available from the Gaia Archive and from Gaia's partner data centres. The Gaia Focused Product Release builds partly on the data period that went into Gaia's Data Release 3 but in case of the Solar System objects it extends the period of time that forms the basis for the FPR data product. This is fully explained for each data product described below. The five data products together form the Gaia Focused Product Release.
Contents of Gaia FPR
Gaia Focused Product Release contains:
- Astrometry and photometry from engineering images taken in selected regions of high source density (only omega Centauri for this FPR).
- The first results of quasars' environment analysis for gravitational lenses search.
- Extended radial velocity epoch data for long-period variables.
- Diffuse Interstellar Bands from aggregated RVS spectra.
- Updated astrometry for Solar System objects.
The pre-main sequence accretion parameters, as initially announced to be part of the Gaia Focused Product Release, has been postponed to Gaia's Data Release 4.
Gaia FPR products overview
The following table gives an overview of the Gaia Focused Product Release and how it fits together with Gaia Data Release 3:
| Period of data observations | 66 months of data | 34 months of data | |
| Total number of Gaia sources | 1,812,236,358 (Gaia DR3 AGIS + Gaia FPR SIFCF) | ||
| Gaia FPR | Gaia FPR | Gaia DR3 | |
| Total number of sources | 1,811,709,771 | ||
| Number of sources with full astrometry (AGIS) | - | - | 1,467,744,818 |
| Number of sources with full astrometry (SIF Crowded Fields) | 526,457 | - | - |
| Number of sources with 2-parameter solution (AGIS) | - | - | 343,964,953 |
| Number of sources with 2-parameter solution (SIF Crowded Fields) | 130 | - | - |
| Sources with mean G magnitude (PhotPipe) | - | - | 1,806,254,432 |
| Sources with mean G magnitude (SIF Crowded Fields) | 526,587 | - | - |
| Specific Object Studies – Long-period variables | - | - | 1,720,588 |
| Long Period Variables with radial velocity time series | - | 9,614 | - |
| Photometrically-variable sources with radial-velocity time series | - | - | 1,898 |
| Sources with a diffuse interstellar band (DIB) in their RVS spectrum | - | use Gaia DR3 | 472,584 |
| Detection of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) in stacked spectra | - | 235,428 | - |
| List of quasar candidates used for Gravitational Lens search | - | 3,760,032 | |
| Potential gravitational lens components (including the quasars) | - | 4,760,920 | - |
| Gravitational lens candidates (which will be ranked A+ to B-) | - | 381 | - |
| Solar system objects | 156,823 | - | 158,152 |
| Solar system objects - epoch astrometry (CCD transits) | 46,264,083 | - | 23,336,467 |
| Solar system objects - orbits | 156,762 | - | 154,741 |
| Solar system objects - average BP/RP reflectance spectra | use Gaia DR3 | - | 60,518 |
| Solar system objects - planetary satellites | 31 | - | 31 |
Gaia FPR products
The Gaia Focused Product Release was introduced as well at the European Astronomical Society meeting in July 2023 in Poland.
Astrometry and photometry from engineering images taken in omega Centauri region
Sources based on Service Interface Function (SIF) images of very dense regions in the sky. These sources build an add-on catalogue to the nominal Gaia catalogue. Nominal and SIF detections were not mixed to create these sources. These sources are thus obtained from SIF image detections only. Sources already present in the nominal catalogue were removed from the SIF add-on catalogue.
The publication consists mainly of
- Astrometric information (position, parallax and proper motion) for 526,457 new Gaia sources as derived from the SIF images (with 130 additional sources with positions only).
- Photometric information (mean G magnitude and flux) for these same 526,587 sources as derived from the SIF images.
Full description of this data product will be provided in the Gaia Collaboration paper by Gaia Collaboration, K. Weingrill, et al.
| Period of observations? | 66 months of data |
|---|---|
| Complementary to Gaia DR3? | Yes |
| Reference epoch? | 2017.5 |
| Gaia DR3 crossmatches applicable? | No, this is fully new data |
| Gaia DR3 passbands applicable? | Yes, Gaia DR3 G-band only |
| Defined in the Gaia-CRF3 frame? | Yes |
| Gaia designation | Gaia FPR yyyy |
First results of quasars' environment analysis for gravitational lenses search
A list of sources around quasar candidates with minimum angular separation of 0.3 arcseconds to be used for gravitational lenses search.
The publication consists mainly of:
- A table of 4.8 million sources (named components), based on an analysis of the observations in the neighbourhood of a list of 3.8 million quasar candidates. This table provides the mean astrometry and mean onboard photometry of the sources.
- The analysis of this table by several artificial intelligence algorithms led to the selection of a list of 381 gravitational lens candidates that are presented in the associated Gaia Collaboration paper. The 4.8 million sources with their scores to be a lens are available at CDS.
- A table of individual epoch observations linked to their corresponding source (component), with their celestial coordinates and onboard magnitudes.
- A table of individual epoch observations classified as outliers and rejected by our clustering analysis, with their celestial coordinates and onboard magnitudes.
Full description of this data product will be provided in the Gaia Collaboration paper: "Gaia Focused Product Release: A catalogue of sources around quasars to search for strongly lensed quasars" by Gaia Collaboration, A. Krone-Martins, et al.
| Period of observations? | 34 months of data |
|---|---|
| Complementary to Gaia DR3? | Yes |
| Reference epoch? | 2016.0 |
| Gaia DR3 crossmatches applicable? | No |
| Gaia DR3 passbands applicable? | Yes |
| Gaia DR3 commanded scan law applicable? | Yes |
| Defined in the Gaia-CRF3 frame? | No |
| Gaia designation | Gaia DR3 yyyy |
Extended radial velocity epoch data for long-period variables
For a list of long-period variables, the radial velocity time series will be published.
The publication consists mainly of:
- Table with the epoch radial velocity data points for a sub-set of variable stars.
- Statistical parameters of radial velocity time series for these long-period variables.
Full description of this data product will be provided in the Gaia Collaboration paper by Gaia Collaboration, M. Trabucchi, et al.
| Period of observations? | 34 months of data |
|---|---|
| Complementary to Gaia DR3? | Yes |
| Reference epoch? | 2016.0 |
| Gaia DR3 crossmatches applicable? | Yes |
| Gaia DR3 passbands applicable? | Yes |
| Gaia DR3 commanded scan law applicable? | Yes |
| Defined in the Gaia-CRF3 frame? | Yes |
| Gaia designation | Gaia DR3 yyyy |
Interstellar Medium: Diffuse Interstellar Bands
A main table of Diffuse Interstellar Band (DIB) parameters from DIB-Spec pipeline will be published, as derived from spectra binned in galactic latitude, longitude and distance.
The publication consists mainly of:
- A table of fitted Diffuse Interstellar Band parameters together with the uncertainties of the DIB at 862.1 nm and 864.8 nm for each voxel (volume pixel) which is defined according to the equatorial coordinates and the distance.
- A spectra table containing the stacked Interstellar Medium spectra for each voxel which is defined according to the galactic coordinates and the distance.
Full description of this data product will be provided in the Gaia Collaboration paper by Gaia Collaboration, M. Schultheis, et al.
| Period of observations? | 34 months of data |
|---|---|
| Complementary to Gaia DR3? | Yes |
| Reference epoch? | 2016.0 |
| Gaia DR3 crossmatches applicable? | N/A, data given per voxel |
| Gaia DR3 passbands applicable? | Yes |
| Gaia DR3 commanded scan law applicable? | Yes |
| Defined in the Gaia-CRF3 frame? | Yes |
| Gaia designation | N/A, data given per voxel |
Updated astrometry for Solar System objects
The publication concerns epoch astrometry of asteroids and natural satellites of the planets, collected by Gaia over 66 months. All objects in this Focused Product Release were already present in the Gaia Data Release 3. In addition, asteroid orbits derived from Gaia data are provided. No additional photometric or spectroscopic data are published.
The publication consists mainly of:
- Updated epoch astrometry of the Solar System objects from Gaia's Data Release 3.
- Orbits of the Solar System Objects from Gaia's Data Release 3 computed with 66 months of data instead of 34 months.
Full description of this data product will be provided in the Gaia Collaboration paper by Gaia Collaboration, P. David, et al.
| Period of observations? | 66 months of data |
|---|---|
| Complementary to Gaia DR3? | No, updates part of Gaia DR3 |
Epoch of the data
Most data products in the Gaia Focused Product Release, e.g. 'Extended radial velocity epoch data for Long Period Variables', 'Diffuse Interstellar Bands from aggregated RVS spectra' and 'The first results of quasars' environment analysis for gravitational lenses search', are based on data collected between 25 July 2014 (10:30 UTC) and 28 May 2017 (08:44 UTC) spanning a period of 34 months of data collection. This leads to a reference epoch of 2016.0, which is the same reference epoch as applicable to Gaia EDR3 and Gaia DR3.
The 'Updated astrometry for Solar System objects' in Gaia's focused Product Release are based on data collected from 26 July 2014 to 20 January 2020, spanning a period of 66 months of data collection.
The 'Astrometry and photometry from engineering images taken in Omega Cen region' are based on data collected since 1 January 2015.
Note that the reference epoch is different for each Gaia data release, and that the reference epoch for Gaia DR2 was J2015.5 (based on 22 months of data) and for Gaia DR1 was J2015.0 (based on 14 months of data).
Positions and proper motions are referred to the ICRS, to which the optical reference frame defined by Gaia DR3 (Gaia-CRF3) is aligned. The time coordinate for Gaia FPR results is the barycentric coordinate time (TCB).
Further information
For further information about Gaia FPR please refer to https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/fpr .
Page last updated: 10 October 2023