Gaia mission Archives

Aladin sky map showing the area around KIC 8175131. The main pixel location for the exoplanet candidate and the host star (Gaia DR3 2078315162505745920) are marked. The FOV is 34.31" across. -- astro-ph.EP

Background Exoplanet Candidates In The Original Kepler Field

by Keith CowingJanuary 20, 2025September 18, 2025

Context. During the primary Kepler mission, between 2009 and 2013, about 150,000 pre-selected targets were observed with a 29.42 minute-long cadence. However, a survey of background stars that fall within […]

A schematic comparison of the conclusions of this work and Mendigutía et al. (2024), revealing that the inner edges of different planetary systems correspond to different mechanisms. The results obtained in this work for small planets align more closely with the dust sublimation model, whereas their results obtained for giant planets are more consistent with migration up to the gas-truncation radius. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Planetary Edge Trends (PET). I. The Inner Edge-Stellar Mass Correlation

by Keith CowingJanuary 12, 2025January 11, 2025

The position of the innermost planet (i.e., the inner edge) in a planetary system provides important information about the relationship of the entire system to its host star properties, offering […]

The spatial coverage of our study of L 1688A, with the underlying extinction map being computed using 2MASS catalog (Cutri et al. 2003) adopting the NICE technique from Lada et al. (1994). The color bar shows the extinction range. The red square encloses the area of the W band observations covering a field of 20′ × 20′ corresponding to a linear scale of 0.8 pc. -- astro-ph.SR

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Icy Worlds, Interstellar, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Water-Bearing Objects in the Core of the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

by Keith CowingJanuary 3, 2025January 3, 2025

We present a study of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the rich star-forming core of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. The selection of the sample relies on detecting […]

A giant planet in another star system -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Astronomy & Telescopes, Beta Pictoris, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Detection And Characterisation Of Giant Planets With Gaia Astrometry

by Keith CowingNovember 16, 2024November 16, 2024

Astrometric observations with Gaia are expected to play a valuable role in future exoplanet surveys. With current data from Gaia’s third data release (DR3), we are sensitive to periods from […]

Selection of the astrometric solutions for our mock astrometric binary catalog. This figure in inspired by Figure 3 of Halbwachs et al. (2023), who present the same quantities for the astrometric solutions of real sources published in Gaia DR3. Upper left panel shows all solutions with a0/σa0 > 5 and F2 < 25. The cloud of points at long Porb and low fm, ast consists mostly of good solutions, while the vertical stripes of solutions with high fm, ast and short periods are all spurious. In the upper right, green and gray show the distributions of solutions with fm, ast < 0.3 M⊙ (presumed mostly reliable) and fm, astt > 0.3 M⊙ (presumed mostly spurious). Black line shows the empirical cut (Equation 20) below which solutions are discarded. Bottom panels show only solutions that pass this cut. Red lines in these panels show additional cuts applied to the final solutions: only solutions below (left panel) and above (right panel) the red lines were retained. -- astro-ph.GA

Astronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

A Generative Model for Gaia Astrometric Orbit Catalogs: Selection Functions for Binary Stars, Giant Planets, and Compact Object Companions

by Keith CowingNovember 7, 2024November 7, 2024

Astrometry from Gaia DR3 has produced a sample of ∼170,000 Keplerian orbital solutions, with many more anticipated in the next few years. These data have enormous potential to constrain the […]

Comparative plot for the discovery spaces of Gaia and Theia, emphasizing Theia higher precision which enables the exploration of a new discovery space (data extracted from the 22-Oct-2024 version of the Encyclopaedia of exoplanetary systems catalog). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

High Precision Astrometry Science In The Context of Space Mission Prospectives

by Keith CowingOctober 31, 2024October 31, 2024

Astrometry is one of the oldest branches of astronomy which measures the position, the proper motion and parallax of celestial objects.

GaiaPMEX constraints on mass and sma of a candidate companion around β Pictoris. Same caption as Fig. 19. The yellow and pink dots show the properties of the known exoplanet companions b & c in this system, with smab=9.8±0.4 au and mb=10–11 MJ , and smac=2.7±0.02 au and Mc=7.8±0.4 MJ (Lagrange et al. 2020). -- astro-ph.SR

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Searching For Substellar Companion Candidates With Gaia. I. Introducing The GaiaPMEX Tool

by Keith CowingSeptember 26, 2024November 16, 2024

The Gaia mission is expected to yield the detection of several thousands of exoplanets, perhaps at least doubling the number of known exoplanets. Although the harvest is expected to occur […]

The data source: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html The coordinate scales are marked in light years. The third dimension is shown with color (with pink being closest to the viewer, and cyan the farthest). The mass of a star is shown with the size of its circle, and of the font. Inter-stellar distances shorter than 10 light years are shown as lines. The longer the distance, the dimmer is the line. Source -- Wikipedia

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Multiplicity Of Stars With Planets In The Solar Neighbourhood

by Keith CowingJuly 30, 2024

Aims: We intended to quantify the impact of stellar multiplicity on the presence and properties of exoplanets.

This illustration depicts a binary star system consisting of a dense neutron star and a normal Sun-like star (upper left). Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, astronomers found several systems like this one, in which the two bodies are widely separated. Because the bodies in these systems are far apart, with separations on average 300 times the size of a Sun-like star, the neutron star is dormant—it is not actively stealing mass from its companion and is thus very faint. To find these hidden neutron stars, the scientists used Gaia observations to look for a wobble in the Sun-like stars caused by a tugging action of the orbiting neutron stars. These are the first neutron stars discovered purely due to their gravitational effects. As depicted in this illustration, the intense gravity of the compact neutron star—which is about 100,000 times smaller than the Sun-like star yet heavier—warps our view of the sky around it, producing a distorted mirrored view of the nearby star. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Radiation, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Stellar Cartography

Sun-like Stars Have Been Found Orbiting Hidden Companions

by Keith CowingJuly 29, 2024July 29, 2024

Most stars in our universe come in pairs. While our own Sun is a loner, many stars like our Sun orbit similar stars, while a host of other exotic pairings […]

Illustration of the positions and proper motions that Hipparcos and Gaia would measure for the same hypothetical orbit but with six different periods. The orbits shown have had parallactic and proper motion removed (c.f. Figure 1). The small colored ellipses show the quasi-one-dimensional position measurements made by Hipparcos and Gaia, the diamonds show the best-fit positions at Jyr 1991.25 and 2016.0 from fitting straight lines to the blue and orange points, respectively, and the arrows show the best-fit proper motions. The portions of the orbit covered by Hipparcos and Gaia are indicated by shading on the orbit, and a black arrow indicates the (counterclockwise) direction of orbital motion. Differences between the Hipparcos proper motion, the Gaia proper motion, and the scaled difference between the Hipparcos and Gaia positions can constrain orbital motion. At short periods (top middle and especially top left), the positions and proper motions can bear little resemblance to the instantaneous position and proper motion at the average epoch of observation, while at long periods (lower right) this distinction becomes insignificant. For all periods shown other than 50 years the star completes more than one full orbit between the Hipparcos and Gaia central epochs. -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

Astrometry As A Tool For Discovering And Weighing Faint Companions To Nearby Stars

by Keith CowingJune 21, 2024June 21, 2024

This tutorial covers the use of absolute astrometry, in particular from the combination of the Hipparcos and Gaia missions, to identify faint companions to nearby stars and to measure the […]