GAIA Data Explorer

Illustrates how to download and explore GAIA astrometry data.

The European Space Agency makes available via the gaia archive the Gaia satellite astrometric information (position, velocity, magnitudes) for 1.3 billion Milky Way stars and positions and magnitudes for 1.7 billion stars enabling unprecedented studies of galactic structure and dynamics. The entire catalog is available to download but is over 1.3 TB for early data release EDR3 and over 500 GB for EDR2. Select data may be downloaded via a webform. This Live Script illustrates how to use the Gaia Archive's web service API and ADQL (Astronomical Data Query Language) to download select GAIA data and performs a simple analysis identifying the Pleiades star cluster. To a degree, the methods provided here obviate the need for familiarlity with a toolkit/loibrary like AstroPy in order to dip your toes into GAIA data.

This script may interest especially students and instructors of astronomy and astrophysics. 'Try this' suggestions and 'Challenges' are included for further exloration.