Gaia Data Release 3: Stellar multiplicity, a teaser for the hidden treasure

Understand

The Gaia DR3 Catalogue contains for the first time about eight hundred thousand solutions with either orbital elements or trend parameters for astrometric, spectroscopic and eclipsing binaries, and combinations of them.

• This paper aims to illustrate the huge potential of this large non-single star catalogue.
• Using the orbital solutions together with models of the binaries, a catalogue of tens of thousands of stellar masses, or lower limits, partly together with consistent flux ratios, has been built.
• Properties concerning the completeness of the binary catalogues are discussed, statistical features of the orbital elements are explained and a comparison with other catalogues is performed.