Gaia Data Release 3: Chemical cartography of the Milky Way

Understand

Gaia DR3 opens a new era of all-sky spectral analysis of stellar populations thanks to the nearly 5.6 million stars observed by the RVS and parametrised by the GSP-spec module.

• The all-sky Gaia chemical cartography allows a powerful and precise chemo-dynamical view of the Milky Way with unprecedented spatial coverage and statistical robustness.
• First, it reveals the strong vertical symmetry of the Galaxy and the flared structure of the disc.
• Second, the observed kinematic disturbances of the disc -- seen as phase space correlations -- and kinematic or orbital substructures are associated with chemical patterns that favour stars with enhanced metallicities and lower [alpha/Fe] abundance ratios compared to the median values in the radial distributions.