HATS Directory Scheme#
Partitioning Scheme#
We use healpix (Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization) for the spherical pixelation, and adaptively size the partitions based on the number of objects.
In areas of the sky with more objects, we use smaller pixels, so that all the resulting pixels should contain similar counts of objects (within an order of magnitude).
The following figure is a possible HATS partitioning. Note:
darker/bluer areas are stored in low order / high area tiles
lighter/yellower areas are stored in higher order / lower area tiles
the galactic plane is very prominent!

A possible HEALPix distribution for Gaia DR3.#
File structure#
The catalog reader expects to find files according to the following partitioned structure: