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gaia data release 3 documentation

5.8 The Gaia Andromeda Photometric Survey

5.8.1 Introduction

As part of the overall Gaia approach of releasing the data iteratively, epoch photometry for a limited area is being released as part of Gaia DR3. This is the Gaia Andromeda Photometric Survey (GAPS) and will include photometry for constant and variable sources. Epoch photometry will be released for all sources in Gaia DR4 as originally planned. In this way, the astronomical user will gain an early understanding of the epoch photometry before it is released in full. In this documentation, only a brief description of the data is given. For more information regarding the overall statistics and performance, see Evans et al. (2023). This paper also draws attention to some of the limitations of the data and gives some usage examples.