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gaia data release 3 documentation

20.13 Variability tables

20.13.11 vari_long_period_variable

This table describes the Long Period Variable stars.
Some entries can be NaN when absent.

Columns description:

solution_id : Solution Identifier (long)

All Gaia data processed by the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium comes tagged with a solution identifier. This is a numeric field attached to each table row that can be used to unequivocally identify the version of all the subsystems that were used in the generation of the data as well as the input data used. It is mainly for internal DPAC use but is included in the published data releases to enable end users to examine the provenance of processed data products. To decode a given solution ID visit https://gaia.esac.esa.int/decoder/solnDecoder.jsp

source_id : Unique source identifier (long)

A unique single numerical identifier of the source obtained from gaia_source (for a detailed description see gaia_source.source_id).

frequency : Frequency of the LPV (double, Frequency[day-1])

This field is the frequency found for the Long Period Variable star.

frequency_error : Error on the frequency (float, Frequency[day-1])

This field gives the error on the frequency for the Long Period Variable star.

amplitude : Amplitude of the LPV variability (float, Magnitude[mag])

This field gives the (half peak-to-peak) variability amplitude, in magnitude, of the frequency for the Long Period Variable star.

median_delta_wl_rp : Median of the pseudo-wavelength separations between the two highest peaks in RP spectra (float)

Median among all GRP epoch spectra of the pseudo-wavelength separations between the two highest peaks in the GRP spectra. It is set to Null when the spectrum does not allow an automatic identification of two maxima. This value is used in the definition of the is_cstar parameter.

is_cstar : Flag to mark C-stars (Boolean)

The parameter is_cstar is set to TRUE if a star has been identified as a C-star based on the value of the median_delta_wl_rp parameter derived from the GRP spectrum shape. It is set to FALSE if it is an O-rich star. It is set to NULL when the shape of the spectrum cannot allow an automatic classification between these two types of LPVs. A note on S-type stars: the method cannot classify correctly the nature of these stars. As a consequence, they may have the is_cstar flag set to either TRUE or FALSE.