ESA Science & Technology - Gaia's Early Data Release 3 in numbers

Gaia's Early Data Release 3 was made public on 3 December 2020. It contains detailed information on more than 1.8 billion sources, as measured by the Gaia spacecraft. This represents an increase of more than 100 million sources over the previous data release (Gaia DR2), which was made public in April 2018. Gaia EDR3 also contains colour information for around 1.5 billion sources, an increase of about 200 million sources over Gaia DR2. As well as including more sources, the general accuracy and precision of the measurements has also improved.

Gaia EDR3 includes:

• 1 811 709 771 sources with positions to provide the best ever sky map
• 1 467 744 818 sources with parallax and proper motion to reveal their distances and motions
• 1 806 254 432 sources with the measurement of their brightness in white light
• 1 542 033 472 sources with the brightness of the objects in blue light
• 1 554 997 939 sources with the brightness of the objects in red light
  ​​​​​​​(a comparison of the blue and the red light provides information on the temperature of the object)
• 1 614 173 extragalactic sources to provide a reference frame for measuring 'absolute' positions and motions.

 
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