Gaia EDR3

Gaia Spectrophotometric Standard Star Catalogue

IGSL contains a list of about 200 stars of different spectral classes and magnitudes needed for calibration of the photometric measurements. It is the result of the Gaia Spectrophotometric Standard Stars Survey (SPSS), a selection of stars using Earth-based data in advance of the Gaia mission. Previous catalogues for calibrating magnitudes could not be used for the mission because many of these objects are too bright for Gaia to detect. It was anticipated that some of the stars selected may be previously unrecognized doubles or variable stars that would need to be deleted from the catalogue; for this reason the list contains more stars than necessary. For Gaia EDR3 (Early Data Release 3), a selection was made from more than 100,000 objects that were used for the calibration. These are well-observed objects selected according to Stetson Secondary Standards, but only Gaia data were used.