Preparing for the Gaia DR4 Epochalypse: Simulated Epoch Astrometry for Substellar Companion Orbit-Modeling Benchmarks

@misc{yahalomi2026preparing,
  title = {{Preparing for the Gaia DR4 Epochalypse: Simulated Epoch Astrometry for Substellar Companion Orbit-Modeling Benchmarks}},
  author = {Daniel A. Yahalomi and Adrian M. Price-Whelan and Jessica Speedie and William Thompson and Megan Bedell and Victor Ramirez Delgado and Aida Behmard and Avraham Binnenfeld and Dori Blakely and Anthony G. A. Brown and Andrew R. Casey and Jiayin Dong and Clarissa R. Do Ó and Caleb Lammers and Cheyanne Shariat and Joshua N. Winn},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06915},
  eprint = {2611.06915},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06915},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Preparing for the Gaia DR4 Epochalypse: Simulated Epoch Astrometry for Substellar Companion Orbit-Modeling Benchmarks
AU  - Daniel A. Yahalomi
AU  - Adrian M. Price-Whelan
AU  - Jessica Speedie
AU  - William Thompson
AU  - Megan Bedell
AU  - Victor Ramirez Delgado
AU  - Aida Behmard
AU  - Avraham Binnenfeld
AU  - Dori Blakely
AU  - Anthony G. A. Brown
AU  - Andrew R. Casey
AU  - Jiayin Dong
AU  - Clarissa R. Do Ó
AU  - Caleb Lammers
AU  - Cheyanne Shariat
AU  - Joshua N. Winn
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/04
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06915
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06915
AB  - Gaia's fourth data release (DR4) will provide epoch astrometry for billions of sources, enabling the detection of potentially tens of thousands of substellar companions. We present the epochalypse catalog: Gaia DR4-like epoch astrometry for testing orbit-modeling pipelines on a common set of injected systems with known parameters. Onto each of the 5,040,328 main-sequence Gaia stars within 500 pc in the G23H catalog, we inject a zero-, one-, and two-companions system, for 15,120,984 systems in total. Companion masses and semimajor axes are drawn log-uniformly over 1 M_ Mars--80 M_ Jup and $0.03−−100\,{ \rm au}$, with no occurrence model and no detectability cut, so orbital periods extend well beyond the mission baseline and the companion-free population serves as a matched null. We also flag sub-populations of one- and two-companions systems whose companions are potentially detectable, based on an estimated signal-to-noise ratio that accounts for each star's noise, number of transits, and the suppression of signals with periods longer than the baseline. As a demonstration, we run the kepmodel astrometric periodogram on every system and find that signal detection and period localization decouple beyond the DR4 baseline: long-period companions can produce significant astrometric curvature while their periods, and therefore their masses, remain poorly constrained. Under any companion occurrence model, this population of systems where the orbit is detectable but not characterizable will far outnumber the population with fully characterizable orbits. The epochalypse catalog, its full generation pipeline, and a modeling tutorial are publicly available.
ER  -