Gaia Data Release 1

Released on 14 September 2016.

Gaia DR1 is based on observations collected between 25 July 2014 and 16 September 2015 (14 months).

What does DR1 include?

• Positions and Gaia ‘G’ magnitudes for 1.1 billion stars using only Gaia data.
• Positions, parallaxes (distances) and proper motions for more than 2 million stars using the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS).
• Light curves and characteristics for about 3,000 variable stars.
• Positions and G magnitudes for more than 2,000 quasars – extragalactic sources used to define the celestial reference frame.

How to access data?

All data are available from ESA’s Gaia Archive, which also provides visualization tools, pre-computed cross-matches with other large catalogues, as well as comprehensive documentation to explore the data sets.

Gaia’s first sky map

Based on the first year of observations from ESA’s Gaia satellite, this map shows the density of stars observed by Gaia in each portion of the sky. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer stars are observed.

More information

For further information on the beginnings of the Gaia mission and the DR1, watch the video!

Visit the ESA’s cosmos website for more details on this DR1!