ruwe

RUWE, short for Renormalised Unit Weight Error, is a metric used in the Gaia space astrometry mission to assess the quality of the astrometric solution for an individual source. It is designed to flag sources whose astrometric fits may be unreliable due to unmodeled motion, multiplicity, or data issues, and is widely used to curate clean samples for scientific analyses.

The RUWE value is derived from the unit weight error and is subsequently renormalized to account for magnitude-dependent variations in Gaia's measurement precision. In practice, RUWE is calculated from the goodness-of-fit statistics of the astrometric solution and then adjusted by a magnitude-dependent factor, producing a dimensionless quantity that centers around unity for well-behaved, single stars with good fits. The result is provided for each source in Gaia data releases.

Interpretation of RUWE is straightforward: values near 1 indicate a good, well-modeled astrometric solution. Higher values indicate increasingly questionable fits and can point to unresolved binaries, extended or crowded sources, or other issues in the data. Common empirical thresholds are around RUWE = 1.4; values above this level are often treated as suspect, though exact cutoffs may vary by study and data release. Very large RUWE values strongly suggest problems with the astrometry.

RUWE is widely used in astronomical analyses to filter Gaia samples, identify potential binaries, or flag sources requiring careful treatment. While it is a useful diagnostic, RUWE is not a definitive proof of binarity or variability and should be considered alongside other indicators and data quality metrics.