GaiaData Release 3

Abstract

Context.GaiaData Release 3 (DR3) contains the first release of magnitudes estimated from the integration of Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) spectra for a sample of about 32.2 million stars brighter thanGRVS ∼ 14 mag (orG ∼ 15 mag).Aims.In this paper, we describe the data used and the approach adopted to derive and validate theGRVSmagnitudes published in DR3. We also provide estimates of theGRVSpassband and associatedGRVSzero-point.Methods.We derivedGRVSphotometry from the integration of RVS spectra over the wavelength range from 846 to 870 nm. We processed these spectra following a procedure similar to that used for DR2, but incorporating several improvements that allow a better estimation ofGRVS. These improvements pertain to the stray-light background estimation, the line spread function calibration, and the detection of spectra contaminated by nearby relatively bright sources. We calibrated theGRVSzero-point every 30 h based on the reference magnitudes of constant stars from the HIPPARCOScatalogue, and used them to transform the integrated flux of the cleaned and calibrated spectra into epoch magnitudes. TheGRVSmagnitude of a star published in DR3 is the median of the epoch magnitudes for that star. We estimated theGRVSpassband by comparing the RVS spectra of 108 bright stars with their flux-calibrated spectra from external spectrophotometric libraries.Results.TheGRVSmagnitude provides information that is complementary to that obtained from theG,GBP, andGRPmagnitudes, which is useful for constraining stellar metallicity and interstellar extinction. The median precision ofGRVSmeasurements ranges from about 0.006 mag for the brighter stars (i.e. with 3.5≲GRVS≲6.5 mag) to 0.125 mag at the faint end. The derivedGRVSpassband shows that the effective transmittance of the RVS is approximately 1.23 times better than the pre-launch estimate.