gaia-cmd-plotter

gaia_cmd_plotter is a Python package for creating customized Matplotlib axes that display a Gaia Color-Magnitude Diagram (CMD) background. This package is useful for visualising astronomical data within the context of a Gaia CMD.

Installation

You can install gaia_cmd_plotter using pip:

pip install gaia-cmd-plotter

Usage

To use the package, first import the GaiaCMDAxis class from the gaia_cmd_plotter.gaia_cmd_plotter module.

from gaia_cmd_plotter.gaia_cmd_axis import GaiaCMDAxis

Next, create a new GaiaCMDAxis object and add it to a Matplotlib figure.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8, 8))
ax = GaiaCMDAxis(fig)

You can then use the GaiaCMDAxis object like any other Matplotlib axis. For example, you can plot data on top of the Gaia CMD background,

bp_rp = 3.5
g_abs = 5.0
ax.plot(bp_rp, g_abs, "ko", ms=10, mec="k")

Acknowledgements

This package has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia mission, processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. The CMD background data was obtained from the Gaia data release 3 (DR3; Gaia Collaboration et al. 2016, 2023). The bulk of points in the CMD background are retrieved from the Gaia DR3 catalog, using the query in Gaia Collaboration 2018.

References

1. Gaia Collaboration, 2016, A&A, 595, A1
2. Gaia Collaboration, 2018, A&A, 616, A10
3. Gaia Collaboration, 2023, A&A, 674, A38