Although it was originally planned to limit "Gaia"s observations to stars fainter than magnitude 5.7, tests carried out during the commissioning phase indicated that "Gaia" could autonomously identify stars as bright as magnitude 3. When "Gaia" entered regular scientific operations in July 2014, it was configured to routinely process stars in the magnitude range 3 – 20. Beyond that limit, special procedures are used to download raw scanning data for the remaining 230 stars brighter than magnitude 3; methods to reduce and analyse these data are being developed; and it is expected that there will be "complete sky coverage at the bright end" with standard errors of "a few dozen µas".