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Gaia propermotion direction

fargoing 11 months ago updated by Deborah Baines 11 months ago 1

I have noted that some targets are observed with large proper motion from Gaia DR3. But I am not clear what's the direction of the proper motion. I notice that some are marked with arrows and some are not. So how can I know the direction of the proper motion for those targets.

Answered

Dear ESASky user,

The dotted lines indicate the direction of motion of the stars that have proper motion values in the Gaia DR3 catalogue. However, these dotted lines only change to the solid line when you zoom in enough to see the actual proper motion (or at least the position from epoch J2000 to J2016, the Gaia DR3 epoch). See these two screenshots as an example of zooming in on a star:

Image 116

Image 117

More information about this feature and the astrometric catalogues in ESASky can be found in the documentation here: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/esasky-interface#datapanel

I hope this answers your question and we hope you're finding ESASky useful.

Best regards,

Deborah