Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties: We present the second Gaia data release, Gaia DR2, consisting of astrometry, photometry, radial velocities, and information on as- trophysical parameters and variability, for sources brighter than magnitude 21. In addition epoch astrometry and photometry are provided for a modest sample of minor planets in the solar system. A summary of the contents of Gaia DR2 is presented, accompanied by a discussion on the differences with respect to Gaia DR1 and an overview of the main limitations which are still present in the survey. Recommendations are made on the responsible use of Gaia DR2 results. Methods. The raw data collected with the Gaia instruments during the first 22 months of the mission have been processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) and turned into this second data release, which represents a major advance with respect to Gaia DR1 in terms of completeness, performance, and richness of the data products. Gaia DR2 contains celestial positions and the apparent brightness in G for approximately 1.7 billion sources. For 1.3 billion of those sources, parallaxes and proper motions are in addition available. The sample of sources for which variability information is provided is expanded to 0.5 million stars. This data release contains four new elements: broad-band colour information in the form of the apparent brightness in the G_BP_ (330-680nm) and G_RP_ (630-1050nm) bands is available for 1.4 billion sources; median radial velocities for some 7 million sources are presented; for between 77 and 161 million sources estimates are provided of the stellar effective temperature, extinction, reddening, and radius and luminosity; and for a pre-selected list of 14000 minor planets in the solar system epoch astrometry and photometry are presented. Finally, Gaia DR2 also represents a new materialisation of the celestial reference frame in the optical, the Gaia-CRF2, which is the first optical reference frame based solely on extragalactic sources. There are notable changes in the photometric system and the catalogue source list with respect to Gaia DR1, and we stress the need to consider the two data releases as independent. Gaia DR2 represents a major achievement for the Gaia mission, delivering on the long standing promise to provide parallaxes and proper motions for over 1 billion stars, and representing a first step in the availability of complementary radial velocity and source astrophysical information for a sample of stars in the Gaia survey which covers a very substantial fraction of the volume of our galaxy. The catalogue of radial velocity standard stars (Soubiran et al., 2018A&A...616A...7S) The Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) on board of Gaia having no calibration device, the zero point of radial velocities needs to be calibrated with stars proved to be stable at the level of 300m/s during the Gaia observations. A dataset of about 71000 ground-based radial velocity measurements from five high resolution spectrographs has been compiled. A catalogue of 4813 stars was built by combining these individual measurements. The zero point has been established using asteroids. The resulting catalogue has 7 observations per star on average on a typical time baseline of 6 years, with a median standard deviation of 15m/s. A subset of the most stable stars fulfilling the RVS requirements has been used to establish the zero point of the radial velocities provided in Gaia DR2. The stars not used for calibration are used for the RVS data validation.
Gaia DR3 data (both Gaia EDR3 and the full Gaia DR3) 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. As a comparison, Gaia DR2 was based on 22 months of data and Gaia DR1 was based on observations collected during the first 14 months of Gaia's routine operational phase. Survey completeness: The Gaia EDR3 catalogue is essentially complete between G=12 and G=17. The source list for the release is incomplete at the bright end and has an ill-defined faint magnitude limit, which depends on celestial position. The combination of the Gaia scan law coverage and the filtering on data quality which will be done prior to the publication of Gaia EDR3, does lead to some regions of the sky displaying source density fluctuations that reflect the scan law pattern. In addition, small gaps exist in the source distribution, for instance close to bright stars. Astrometry: The parallax improvement is typically 20% with respect to Gaia DR2. The proper motions are typically a factor two better than in Gaia DR2. An overall reduction of systematics has been achieved. E.g., the parallax zero point deduced from the extragalactic sources is about -20{mu}as. A tentative correction formula for the parallax zero point will be provided. Closer to the release date of Gaia Early Data Release 3, an update will be given on the astrometry. Photometry: The G-band photometric uncertainties are ~0.25mmag for G<13, 1mmag at G=17, and 5mmag at G=20mag. The GBP-band photometric uncertainties are ~1mmag for G<13, 10mmag at G=17, and 100mmag at G=20mag. The GRP-band photometric uncertainties are ~1mmag for G<13, 5mmag at G=17, and 50mmag at G=20mag. Closer to the release date of Gaia Early Data Release 3, an update will be given on the photometry. Gaia EDR3 does not contain new radial velocities. The radial velocities of Gaia Data Release 2 have been added to Gaia EDR3 in order to ease the combination of spectrosopic and astrometric data. Radial velocities: Gaia EDR3 hence contains Gaia DR2 median radial velocities for about 7.21 million stars with a mean G magnitude between ~4 and ~13 and an effective temperature (Teff) in the range ~3550 to 6900K. The overall precision of the radial velocities at the bright end is of the order of ~200-300m/s while at the faint end, the overall precision is ~1.2km/s for a Teff of 4750K and ~3.5km/s for a Teff of 6500K. Before publication in Gaia EDR3, an additional filtering has been performed onto the Gaia DR2 radial velocities to remove some 4000 sources that had wrong radial velocities. Please be aware that the Gaia DR2 values are assigned to the Gaia EDR3 sources through an internal cross-match operation. In total, ~10000 Gaia DR2 radial velocities could not be associated to a Gaia EDR3 source. Astrophysical parameters: Gaia EDR3 does not contain new astrophysical parameters. Astrophysical parameters have been published in Gaia DR2 and a new set is expected to be released with the full Gaia DR3 release. Variable stars: Gaia EDR3 does not contain newly classified variable stars. For the overview of the currently available variable stars from Gaia DR2, have a look here. Classifications for a larger set of variable stars are expected with the full Gaia DR3 release. Solar system objects: A large set of solar system objects with orbits will become available with the full Gaia DR3 release. Information on the currently available asteroids in Gaia DR2 can be found here. Documentation: Data release documentation is provided along with each data release in the form of a downloadable PDF and a webpage. The various chapters of the documentation have been indexed at ADS allowing them to be cited. Please visit the Gaia Archive (https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive) to access this documentation, and make sure to check out all relevant information given through the documentation overview page (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia-users/archive).
We present a sub-arcsecond cross-match of Gaia DR2 (Cat. I/345) against the INT Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane Data Release 2 (IPHAS DR2, Cat. II/321) and the Kepler-INT Survey (KIS, Cat. J/AJ/144/24). The resulting value-added catalogues (VACs) provide additional precise photometry to the Gaia photometry (r, i and H-alpha for IPHAS, with additional U and g for KIS). In building the catalogue, proper motions given in Gaia DR2 are wound back to match the epochs of IPHAS DR2, thus ensuring high proper motion objects are appropriately cross-matched. The catalogues contain 7927224 and 791071 sources for IPHAS and KIS, respectively. The requirement of >5 sigma parallax detection for every included source means that distances out to 1-1.5kpc are well covered. We define two additional parameters for each catalogued object: (i) fc, a magnitude-dependent tracer of the quality of the Gaia astrometric fit; (ii) fFP, the false-positive rate for parallax measurements determined from astrometric fits of a given quality at a given magnitude. Selection cuts based on these parameters can be used to clean colour-magnitude and colour-colour diagrams in a controlled and justified manner. We provide both full and light versions of the VAC, with VAC-light containing only objects that represent our recommended trade-off between purity and completeness. Uses of the catalogues include the identification of new variable stars in the matched data sets, and more complete identification of H-alpha-excess emission objects thanks to separation of high-luminosity stars from the main sequence.
Accurate equatorial coordinates have been determined for variable stars in the globular cluster NGC 3201. Results of photographic BV photometry are presented.
We present the historic photographic light curves of three little known blazars (two BL Lac objects and one FSRQ), GB6 J1058+5628, GB6 J1148+5254, and GB6 J1209+4119, spanning a time interval of about 50 years, mostly built using the Asiago plate archive. All objects show evident long-term variability, over which short-term variations are superposed. One source, GB6 J1058+5628, showed a marked quasi-periodic variability of 1mag on timescale of about 6.3 years, making it one of the few BL Lac objects with a quasi-periodic behavior.
A photometric UBV survey is presented for 610 stars in a region surrounding the Cepheid AQ Puppis and centered southwest of the variable, based upon photoelectric measures for 14 stars and calibrated iris photometry of photographic plates of the field for 596 stars. An analysis of reddening and distance for program stars indicates that the major dust complex in this direction is ~1.8kpc distant, producing differential extinction described by a ratio of total-to-selective extinction of R=A_V_/E_B-V_=3.10+/-0.20. Zero-age main-sequence fitting for the main group of B-type stars along the line of sight yields a distance of 3.21+/-0.19kpc (V_0_-M_V_=12.53+/-0.13s.e.). The 29.97 Cepheid AQ Pup, of field reddening E_B-V_=0.47+/-0.07 (E_B-V_(B0)=0.51+/-0.07), appears to be associated with B-type stars lying within 5' of it as well as with a sparse group of stars, designated Turner 14, centered south of it at J2000.0=07:58:37, -29:25:00, with a mean reddening of E_B-V_=0.81+/-0.01. AQ Pup has an inferred luminosity as a cluster member of <M_V_>=-5.40+/-0.25 and an evolutionary age of 3x10^7^yr. Its observed rate of period increase of +300.1+/-1.2s/yr is an order of magnitude larger than what is observed for Cepheids of comparable period in the third crossing of the instability strip, and may be indicative of a high rate of mass loss or a putative fifth crossing. Another sparse cluster, designated Turner 13, surrounds the newly recognized 2.59 Cepheid V620 Pup, of space reddening E_B-V_=0.64+/-0.02 (E_B-V_(B0)=0.68+/-0.02), distance 2.88+/-0.11kpc (V_0_-M_V_=12.30+/-0.08s.e.), evolutionary age 10^8^yr, and an inferred luminosity as a likely cluster member of <M_V_>=-2.74+/-0.11. V620 Pup is tentatively identified as a first crosser, pending additional observations.
We present a machine selected catalogue of 11289 objects with proper motions exceeding 0.18arcsec/yr and an R-band faint magnitude limit of 19.5mag. The catalogue was produced using SuperCOSMOS digitized R-Band ESO and UK Schmidt Plates in 287 Schmidt fields covering almost 7000 square degrees (~17% of the whole sky) at the South Galactic Cap. The catalogue includes UK Schmidt BJ and I magnitudes for all of the stars as well as 2MASS magnitudes for 10447 of the catalogue stars. We also show that the NLTT is ~95% complete for DE>-32.5{deg}.
We present a catalogue of 6206 stars which have proper motions exceeding 0.18 arcsec/yr with an R-band faint magnitude limit of 19.5mag. This catalogue has been produced using SuperCOSMOS digitized R-Band ESO and UK Schmidt Plates in 131 Schmidt fields covering more than 3,000 square degrees (>7.5% of the whole sky) at the South Galactic Cap. The survey is >90% complete within the nominal limits of the Luyten Two Tenths Catalogue of m_R_<18.5mag and 0.2<{mu}<2.5arcsec/yr, and is >80% complete for m_R_<19.5mag and {mu}<2.5arcsec/yr.
Long-term photographic photometry of the active long-period RS CVn binary HK Lac (HD 209813) was obtained from more than 2000 Sonneberg Sky-Patrol plates taken between 1956 and 1996. We achieve an internal accuracy of 0.07mag. The correspondence with contemporaneous high-precision photoelectric photometry from automatic telescopes is striking and successfully demonstrates the feasibility of our approach. Based on a Bayesian periodogram analysis, we improve previously published cycle periods to 13.37+/-0.8 and 6.7+/-0.1-years, and present evidence of an additional period of 9.48+/-0.13-years. This establishes the multi-periodicity of dynamo action in these overactive stars as compared to the Sun. Of course, the 6.7-years cycle may be an overtone of the dominating 13.4-years cycle. Our long-term photographic photometry even allowed the detection of the star's mean rotational period of 24.35-days.
