Gaia telescope data for Astrosynthesis

There has been a recent mission by ESA, using the Gaia telescope, to plot the locations, characteristics and distances of a huge number of stars and I was wondering whether anyone knows of a way of downloading the data - maybe as a CSV file - to load into astrosynthesis.

Comments

  • I have partially answered my own question. I have found some CSV files here: http://cdn.gea.esac.esa.int/Gaia/gdr1/gaia_source/ but they are in a special zipped format. Once I unzipped them, I loaded them into MS Excel and they looked more or less as I expected. However, I could not import the file into AS3. I suspect I need to do something with the CSV file before it will import. Once I've sorted that out, I'll post a report here.

  • edited July 2019

    (moved convo to Astro topic)

    The typical problem with astronomical data is that the data needs to be converted from angles to the x/y/z coordinates that Astro uses.

    What I would love to see is an up to date data set of all the exoplanets. Something that can be automated so that it can be imported into Astro, planets and all.

  • The data I found above looks like the complete Gaia set. Each file listed contains 200,000 plus objects. I have the Keppner listings an AS user provided to me for the nearest 1,000 stars converted to the correct format for AS3. I'm going to look at that in Excel and see if I can do the necessary work on at least some of the objects in the first Gaia file.

    If I'm successful, I'll upload the result on NBOS Exchange for anyone who's interested. I suspect the work to convert the entire dataset to the correct format will be prohibitive - apparently, Gaia has surveyed 1.7 billion objects!

  • Later: having checked the format, I can't work out what the spreadsheet columns are providing. The headings are all technical (I have no degree in astrophysics, sadly) and would need somebody who recognises the data. I shall persevere but don't hold your breath!

  • Later still: I found this while browsing. It might get you started on the extrasolar planet project, Ed. http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/.

  • Actually I think that would. Previously there was no data set that had both the planet and the star positions in them.

  • If you find it useful, let me know - I'm interested in seeing what might be possible for AS.

  • Any progress with my link - I'm about to re-visit the subject?

Leave a Comment