Gaia Early Data Release 3

Catalogue validation

¹ Departament de FQA, Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB), Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: claus@fqa.ub.edu
² GEPI, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France
³ Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France
⁴ Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Landleven 12, 9747 AD Groningen, The Netherlands
⁵ INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁶ Institut UTINAM, CNRS, OSU THETA Franche-Comté Bourgogne, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 25000 Besançon, France
⁷ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., MS 15, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁸ INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo Osservatorio, Padova 35131, Italy
⁹ SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, LNE, 61 avenue de l’Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
¹⁰ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Via Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese, Torino, Italy
¹¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via di Frascati 33, 00078 Monte Porzio Catone (Roma), Italy
¹² ASI Science Data Center, Via del Politecnico, Roma
¹³ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France

Received: 3 November 2020
Accepted: 27 November 2020

Abstract

Context. The third Gaia data release is published in two stages. The early part, Gaia EDR3, gives very precise astrometric and photometric properties for nearly two billion sources together with seven million radial velocities from Gaia DR2. The full release, Gaia DR3, will add radial velocities, spectra, light curves, and astrophysical parameters for a large subset of the sources, as well as orbits for solar system objects.

Aims. Before the publication of the catalogue, many different data items have undergone dedicated validation processes. The goal of this paper is to describe the validation results in terms of completeness, accuracy, and precision for the Gaia EDR3 data and to provide recommendations for the use of the catalogue data.

Methods. The validation processes include a systematic analysis of the catalogue contents to detect anomalies, either individual errors or statistical properties, using statistical analysis and comparisons to the previous release as well as to external data and to models.

Results. Gaia EDR3 represents a major step forward, compared to Gaia DR2, in terms of precision, accuracy, and completeness for both astrometry and photometry. We provide recommendations for dealing with issues related to the parallax zero point, negative parallaxes, photometry for faint sources, and the quality indicators.