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arXiv · 2606.03541

The Gaia GSP-Spec catalogue of interstellar extinctions, and stellar luminosities, radii, and masses

Abstract

The Gaia/DR3 GSP-Spec module has published the atmospheric parameters of up to 5.6 million stars based on the analysis of their Radial Velocity Spectrometer spectra. By combining these spectroscopic parameters with Gaia parallax and photometric measurements, a large catalogue of interstellar colour excesses and extinctions, complemented with stellar luminosities, radii, and masses, was constructed without relying on any stellar evolution or structure models. This catalogue also contains the associated uncertainties estimated from Monte-Carlo realisations for about 4.6 million stars. We present a system of quality flags based on the GSP-Spec quality parameters, the achieved numerical precision, and the Gaia astrometric quality. Adopting these flags, we defined a subsample of high-accuracy and precision parameters of more than 1.5 million stars. The impact of possible GSP-Spec parameter inaccuracies on the derived extinctions, luminosities, radii, and masses was also explored and revealed that the mass is the most affected quantity. The radii and masses were validated by comparison with interferometric and asteroseismic data. This confirmed their high quality, even when the targets were highly extincted by the interstellar medium. We also emphasise that they are fully compatible and homogeneous with the GSP-Spec parameters. This allowed us to avoid systematics and biases that might be hidden when data from different (and potentially) heterogeneous catalogues are combined. Finally, we present some example applications of this catalogue: (i) exoplanet radii and masses, (ii) present-day mass distribution functions, (iii) identification of Galactic populations based on their mass distribution, and (iv) Galactic halo accreted stellar luminosities and masses that confirm their merger epochs

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Patrick de Laverny, Alejandra Recio-Blanco, Camila Navarrete, Pedro A. Palicio, Emanuele Spitoni. 2026-06-02. The Gaia GSP-Spec catalogue of interstellar extinctions, and stellar luminosities, radii, and masses. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.03541

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