juliensimon/gaia-dr3-cepheids

Gaia DR3 Cepheid Variables

Part of the Astronomy Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

The Gaia Data Release 3 catalog of 15,021 Cepheid variable stars of all types -- classical (fundamental mode), Type II, and anomalous Cepheids. Cepheids are among the most important standard candles for calibrating the cosmic distance ladder, with their well-known period-luminosity relation enabling precise distance measurements across the Local Group and beyond.

Dataset description

This dataset contains ~15,006 Cepheids identified and characterized by the Gaia DR3 variability processing pipeline. Each object includes pulsation periods, multi-band photometric parameters (G, BP, RP), light curve amplitudes, classifications, parallaxes, and photometric distances. The catalog spans all Cepheid subtypes: classical Cepheids (DCEP), anomalous Cepheids (ACEP), Type II Cepheids (T2CEP, including BL Her, W Vir, and RV Tau), and multi-mode pulsators.

Cepheids follow a tight period-luminosity (Leavitt) relation that makes them indispensable for measuring distances -- from the Milky Way disk to galaxies tens of megaparsecs away. The Gaia parallaxes provide a geometric anchor for calibrating this relation with unprecedented precision.

Quick stats

• 15,021 Cepheid variables
• 13,077 classical Cepheids (DCEP types)
• Period range: 0.2003 to 215.48 days (median 2.7167)
• 785 with radial velocity measurements
• 5,265 with metallicity estimates

Type breakdown

Type	Count
DCEP	13,077
T2CEP	1,551
ACEP	393

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/gaia-dr3-cepheids", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Period-luminosity (Leavitt) relation
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
valid = df.dropna(subset=["period_best_days", "gaia_g_mag"])
plt.scatter(valid["period_best_days"], valid["gaia_g_mag"], s=0.5, alpha=0.3)
plt.xscale("log")
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
plt.xlabel("Period (days)")
plt.ylabel("G magnitude")
plt.title("Gaia DR3 Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation")
plt.show()

# Classical vs Type II Cepheids
if "is_classical" in df.columns:
    classical = df[df["is_classical"] == True]
    other = df[df["is_classical"] == False]
    print(f"{len(classical):,} classical, {len(other):,} other types")

# Sky distribution
plt.scatter(df["ra_deg"], df["dec_deg"], s=0.1, alpha=0.2)
plt.xlabel("RA (deg)")
plt.ylabel("Dec (deg)")
plt.title("Gaia DR3 Cepheids Sky Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

Ripepi, V. et al. (2023), Gaia Data Release 3. Specific processing of all-sky RR Lyrae and Cepheid stars. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 674, A17. Via VizieR CDS Strasbourg (I/358/vcep).

Related datasets

• gaia-dr3-rr-lyrae -- Gaia DR3 RR Lyrae Variables
• gcvs-variable-stars -- General Catalogue of Variable Stars
• gaia-dr3-eclipsing-binaries -- Gaia DR3 Eclipsing Binaries

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a heart on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a star to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{gaia_dr3_cepheids,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Gaia DR3 Cepheid Variables},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/gaia-dr3-cepheids},
  note = {Based on Ripepi et al. (2023), Gaia DR3, via VizieR CDS Strasbourg}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0