<p>My query for stars north of +75° and brighter than magnitude 4 returns only 6 stars, brightest of which is γ Cephei.
Polaris may be <a href="https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/faqs#BrightStar" rel="nofollow noreferrer">too bright for Gaia</a>.
Even if it doesn't saturate the detector, a bright star will probably have larger astrometric errors than a star between magnitudes 6 and 12.
DR2 coverage of magnitude 5 and brighter stars is better than DR1 but still rather sparse.
Section 3.1 of <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018A%26A...616A...1G/abstract" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this paper</a> plots parallax coverage vs. magnitude and explains why some stars have positions but not parallaxes.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-09T08:58:32.340Z
Polaris has magnitude close to 2, and and GAIA DR2 states that its bright limit is at about mag 3, so Polaris is too bright to be in the catalogue
Dr Chuck
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-08T21:50:57.830Z
2021-04-03T09:17:02.470Z
2021-04-03T09:17:02.470Z
Mike G
<p>Querying GAIA DR2 for Polaris (for example using <a href="https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/</a>) yields empty parallax columns. Anyone knows why it was not measured/published?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-09T19:07:36.877Z
Yes, I filled Polaris in Name box and submitted, got that source id. Thanks for explanation.
Juraj
<parallax><gaia>
Why no Polaris distance in GAIA DR2?
Juraj
# Why no Polaris distance in GAIA DR2?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-06-08)

Querying GAIA DR2 for Polaris (for example using <https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/>) yields empty parallax columns. Anyone knows why it was not measured/published?

**Tags:** parallax, gaia

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Yes, I filled Polaris in Name box and submitted, got that source id. Thanks for explanation.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-06-08. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

My query for stars north of +75° and brighter than magnitude 4 returns only 6 stars, brightest of which is γ Cephei.
Polaris may be [too bright for Gaia](https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/faqs#BrightStar).
Even if it doesn't saturate the detector, a bright star will probably have larger astrometric errors than a star between magnitudes 6 and 12.
DR2 coverage of magnitude 5 and brighter stars is better than DR1 but still rather sparse.
Section 3.1 of [this paper](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018A%26A...616A...1G/abstract) plots parallax coverage vs. magnitude and explains why some stars have positions but not parallaxes.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Polaris has magnitude close to 2, and and GAIA DR2 states that its bright limit is at about mag 3, so Polaris is too bright to be in the catalogue  

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