@pipeworx/esa-gaia

ESA Gaia DR3 — positions, parallaxes (hence distances), proper motions, photometry and astrophysical parameters for 1.8 billion stars, queried over the ESA archive's TAP service.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1864+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• gaia_cone_search(ra, dec, radius_arcmin?, max_magnitude?, min_parallax_mas?, limit?) — every star inside a radius of a sky position, nearest first, with distances derived from parallax.

• gaia_source_by_id(source_id) — one star's full astrometric and photometric record.

• gaia_adql_query(query, limit?) — an arbitrary read-only ADQL SELECT against the archive, row-capped at 2,000.

Related MCP server: mcp-exoplanet-archive

Auth

Keyless — the synchronous TAP endpoint needs no account.

Data sources

• https://gea.esac.esa.int/tap-server/tap/sync — IVOA TAP, ADQL, FORMAT=json. Main table gaiadr3.gaia_source.

Things the next person would otherwise rediscover

• TAP answers a REJECTED query with HTTP 200 and a VOTable <INFO> element carrying the error, so a naive caller books a failure as an empty result. A JSON body with no data array is therefore treated as an error and the <INFO> text surfaced.

• Parallax is in milliarcseconds and can be NEGATIVE. It is a measurement with noise, not a distance: roughly a fifth of faint sources have a negative value. 1000/parallax is a distance in parsecs only when the parallax is positive and well determined, so distance_pc is null — with a distance_note saying why — for a negative parallax or a signal-to-noise below 5. Inverting it anyway produces a confident-looking number that means nothing.

• source_id is a 64-bit integer. JSON.parse has already lost precision above 2^53 by the time the body is parsed, so ids are re-rendered as strings on the way out and accepted as strings on the way in.

• source_id values are release-specific — a DR2 id does not resolve in DR3.

• The anonymous sync endpoint caps results at 2,000 rows and truncates a larger TOP silently, so the cap is applied here explicitly rather than trusted to the server.

• Gaia is dense. A 1-degree cone in the galactic plane is millions of stars; radius_arcmin defaults to 3 and is capped at 60 for that reason.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "esa-gaia": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/esa-gaia/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/esa-gaia/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1864+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/gaia_cone_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"ra":56.75,"dec":24.1167,"radius_arcmin":3,"max_magnitude":15,"limit":5}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/gaia_cone_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-esa-gaia is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/esa-gaia/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "esa-gaia": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-esa-gaia"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Esa Gaia data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT