Correction to the photometric colors of Gaia Early Data Release 3

Abstract

In this work, we use the spectroscopy-based stellar color regression (SCR) method with ~ 0.7 million common stars between LAMOST DR7 and Gaia EDR3 to acquire color corrections in G - GRP and GBP - GRP. A sub-mmag precision is achieved. Our results demonstrate that improvements in the calibration process of the EDR3 have removed the color term in GBP - GRP and eliminated the discontinuity caused by the changes of instrument configurations to a great extent. However, modest systematic trends with G magnitude are still detected. The corresponding color correction terms as a function of G are provided for 9.5 < G < 17.5 mag and compared with other determinations. We conclude that the corrections given in this work are particularly suited for cases where the color-color investigations are required while for color-magnitude investigations other corrections may be better due to systematic with reddening. Possible applications of our results are discussed.