<i>Gaia</i> Early Data Release 3

Abstract

Astronomy & Astrophysics has the great pleasure of publishing a special issue on the early installment of the third data release (EDR3) of the Gaia space mission which has been obtaining exquisite astrometric and photometric measurements since July 2014.Similar to the full third data release planned for 2022, Gaia EDR3 is based on the analysis on the first 34 months of the mission.It provides parallaxes, proper motions, and three-color photometry for 1.5 billion sources, which will all be unchanged in the full third release that will only add information to EDR3.

Topics & Concepts