Gala#

Galactic Dynamics is the study of the formation, history, and evolution of galaxies using the orbits of objects — numerically-integrated trajectories of stars, dark matter particles, star clusters, or galaxies themselves.

gala is an Astropy-affiliated Python package providing efficient tools for galactic dynamics research. It combines Python’s flexibility with optimized low-level code (primarily C) for fast computations. Core functionality includes gravitational potential and force evaluations, orbit integrations, dynamical coordinate transformations, and computing chaos indicators for nonlinear dynamics. gala integrates with Astropy’s units and coordinate systems (astropy.units and astropy.coordinates).

This package is actively developed in a public repository on GitHub. We welcome contributions of all sizes! Whether you find a bug, have a feature request, or want to contribute code, please open an issue on GitHub.

Contributors#

Main author: Adrian Price-Whelan (@adrn)

All contributors (alphabetical last name):

  • Bill Chen (@ybillchen)

  • Dan Foreman-Mackey (@dfm)

  • Nico Garavito-Camargo (@jngaravitoc)

  • Lehman Garrison (@lgarrison)

  • Johnny Greco (@johnnygreco)

  • Akeem Hart (@akeemlh)

  • Sergey Koposov (@segasai)

  • Alex Kurek (@AlexKurek)

  • Daniel Lenz (@DanielLenz)

  • Zhaozhou Li (@syrte)

  • Sophia Lilleengen (@sophialilleengen)

  • Pey Lian Lim (@pllim)

  • Semyeong Oh (@smoh)

  • Clément Robert (@neutrinoceros)

  • Brigitta Sipőcz (@bsipocz)

  • Harrison Souchereau (@HSouch)

  • Nathaniel Starkman (@nstarman)

  • Tom Wagg (@tomwagg)

Citation and Attribution#

JOSS DOI

Here is a list of papers that use Gala

If you make use of this code, please cite the JOSS paper:

@article{gala,
  doi = {10.21105/joss.00388},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.21105%2Fjoss.00388},
  year = 2017,
  month = {oct},
  publisher = {The Open Journal},
  volume = {2},
  number = {18},
  author = {Adrian M. Price-Whelan},
  title = {Gala: A Python package for galactic dynamics},
  journal = {The Journal of Open Source Software}}

Please also cite the Zenodo DOI DOI of the version you used as a software citation:

@software{adrian_price_whelan_2025_16923466,
  author       = {Adrian Price-Whelan and
                  Lehman Garrison and
                  Harrison Souchereau and
                  Tom Wagg and
                  Brigitta Sipőcz and
                  Nathaniel Starkman and
                  Yingtian Chen and
                  Daniel Lenz and
                  Johnny Greco and
                  Akeem Hart and
                  AlexKurek and
                  Clément Robert and
                  Dan Foreman-Mackey and
                  HNLala and
                  P. L. Lim and
                  Semyeong Oh and
                  Sergey Koposov and
                  Sophia Lilleengen and
                  Zhaozhou Li},
  title        = {adrn/gala: v1.10.1},
  month        = aug,
  year         = 2025,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v1.10.1},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.16923466},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16923466},
}