# Welcome to galpy’s documentation¶

galpy is a Python 2 and 3 package for galactic dynamics. It supports orbit integration in a variety of potentials, evaluating and sampling various distribution functions, and the calculation of action-angle coordinates for all static potentials. galpy is an astropy affiliated package and provides full support for astropy’s Quantity framework for variables with units.

galpy is developed on GitHub. If you are looking to report an issue or for information on how to contribute to the code, please head over to galpy’s GitHub page for more information.

As a preview of the kinds of things you can do with galpy, here’s an animation of the orbit of the Sun in galpy’s MWPotential2014 potential over 7 Gyr:

## Acknowledging galpy¶

If you use galpy in a publication, please cite the following paper

• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics, Jo Bovy (2015), Astrophys. J. Supp., 216, 29 (arXiv/1412.3451).

and link to http://github.com/jobovy/galpy. Some of the code’s functionality is introduced in separate papers:

## Papers using galpy¶

galpy is described in detail in this publication:

• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics, Jo Bovy (2015), Astrophys. J. Supp., 216, 29 (2015ApJS..216…29B).

The following is a list of publications using galpy; please let me (bovy at astro dot utoronto dot ca) know if you make use of galpy in a publication.

1. Tracing the Hercules stream around the Galaxy, Jo Bovy (2010), Astrophys. J. 725, 1676 (2010ApJ…725.1676B):
Uses what later became the orbit integration routines and Dehnen and Shu disk distribution functions.
2. The spatial structure of mono-abundance sub-populations of the Milky Way disk, Jo Bovy, Hans-Walter Rix, Chao Liu, et al. (2012), Astrophys. J. 753, 148 (2012ApJ…753..148B):
Employs galpy orbit integration in galpy.potential.MWPotential to characterize the orbits in the SEGUE G dwarf sample.
3. On the local dark matter density, Jo Bovy & Scott Tremaine (2012), Astrophys. J. 756, 89 (2012ApJ…756…89B):
Uses galpy.potential force and density routines to characterize the difference between the vertical force and the surface density at large heights above the MW midplane.
4. The Milky Way’s circular velocity curve between 4 and 14 kpc from APOGEE data, Jo Bovy, Carlos Allende Prieto, Timothy C. Beers, et al. (2012), Astrophys. J. 759, 131 (2012ApJ…759..131B):
Utilizes the Dehnen distribution function to inform a simple model of the velocity distribution of APOGEE stars in the Milky Way disk and to create mock data.
5. A direct dynamical measurement of the Milky Way’s disk surface density profile, disk scale length, and dark matter profile at 4 kpc < R < 9 kpc, Jo Bovy & Hans-Walter Rix (2013), Astrophys. J. 779, 115 (2013ApJ…779..115B):
Makes use of potential models, the adiabatic and Staeckel actionAngle modules, and the quasiisothermal DF to model the dynamics of the SEGUE G dwarf sample in mono-abundance bins.
6. The peculiar pulsar population of the central parsec, Jason Dexter & Ryan M. O’Leary (2013), Astrophys. J. Lett., 783, L7 (2014ApJ…783L…7D):
Uses galpy for orbit integration of pulsars kicked out of the Galactic center.
7. Chemodynamics of the Milky Way. I. The first year of APOGEE data, Friedrich Anders, Christina Chiappini, Basilio X. Santiago, et al. (2013), Astron. & Astrophys., 564, A115 (2014A&A…564A.115A):
Employs galpy to perform orbit integrations in galpy.potential.MWPotential to characterize the orbits of stars in the APOGEE sample.
8. Dynamical modeling of tidal streams, Jo Bovy (2014), Astrophys. J., 795, 95 (2014ApJ…795…95B):
Introduces galpy.df.streamdf and galpy.actionAngle.actionAngleIsochroneApprox for modeling tidal streams using simple models formulated in action-angle space (see the tutorial above).
9. The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. V. Mapping the Dark Matter Halo, Sarah R. Loebman, Zeljko Ivezic Thomas R. Quinn, Jo Bovy, Charlotte R. Christensen, Mario Juric, Rok Roskar, Alyson M. Brooks, & Fabio Governato (2014), Astrophys. J., 794, 151 (2014ApJ…794..151L):
Uses galpy.potential functions to calculate the acceleration field of the best-fit potential in Bovy & Rix (2013) above.
10. The Proper Motion of the Galactic Center Pulsar Relative to Sagittarius A*, Geoffrey C. Bower, Adam Deller, Paul Demorest, et al. (2015), Astrophys. J., 798, 120 (2015ApJ…798..120B):
Utilizes galpy.orbit integration in Monte Carlo simulations of the possible origin of the pulsar PSR J1745-2900 near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
11. The power spectrum of the Milky Way: Velocity fluctuations in the Galactic disk, Jo Bovy, Jonathan C. Bird, Ana E. Garcia Perez, Steven M. Majewski, David L. Nidever, & Gail Zasowski (2015), Astrophys. J., 800, 83 (2015ApJ…800…83B):
Uses galpy.df.evolveddiskdf to calculate the mean non-axisymmetric velocity field due to different non-axisymmetric perturbations and compares it to APOGEE data.
12. The LMC geometry and outer stellar populations from early DES data, Eduardo Balbinot, B. X. Santiago, L. Girardi, et al. (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 449, 1129 (2015MNRAS.449.1129B):
Employs galpy.potential.MWPotential as a mass model for the Milky Way to constrain the mass of the LMC.
13. Generation of mock tidal streams, Mark A. Fardal, Shuiyao Huang, & Martin D. Weinberg (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 452, 301 (2015MNRAS.452..301F):
Uses galpy.potential and galpy.orbit for orbit integration in creating a particle-spray model for tidal streams.
14. The nature and orbit of the Ophiuchus stream, Branimir Sesar, Jo Bovy, Edouard J. Bernard, et al. (2015), Astrophys. J., 809, 59 (2015ApJ…809…59S):
Uses the Orbit.fit routine in galpy.orbit to fit the orbit of the Ophiuchus stream to newly obtained observational data and the routines in galpy.df.streamdf to model the creation of the stream.
15. Young Pulsars and the Galactic Center GeV Gamma-ray Excess, Ryan M. O’Leary, Matthew D. Kistler, Matthew Kerr, & Jason Dexter (2015), Phys. Rev. Lett., submitted (arXiv/1504.02477):
Uses galpy orbit integration and galpy.potential.MWPotential2014 as part of a Monte Carlo simulation of the Galactic young-pulsar population.
16. Phase Wrapping of Epicyclic Perturbations in the Wobbly Galaxy, Alexander de la Vega, Alice C. Quillen, Jeffrey L. Carlin, Sukanya Chakrabarti, & Elena D’Onghia (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 454, 933 (2015MNRAS.454..933D):
Employs galpy orbit integration, galpy.potential functions, and galpy.potential.MWPotential2014 to investigate epicyclic motions induced by the pericentric passage of a large dwarf galaxy and how these motions give rise to streaming motions in the vertical velocities of Milky Way disk stars.
17. Chemistry of the Most Metal-poor Stars in the Bulge and the z ≳ 10 Universe, Andrew R. Casey & Kevin C. Schlaufman (2015), Astrophys. J., 809, 110 (2015ApJ…809..110C):
This paper employs galpy orbit integration in MWPotential to characterize the orbits of three very metal-poor stars in the Galactic bulge.
18. The Phoenix stream: a cold stream in the Southern hemisphere, E. Balbinot, B. Yanny, T. S. Li, et al. (2015), Astrophys. J., 820, 58 (2016ApJ…820…58B).
19. Discovery of a Stellar Overdensity in Eridanus-Phoenix in the Dark Energy Survey, T. S. Li, E. Balbinot, N. Mondrik, et al. (2015), Astrophys. J., 817, 135 (2016ApJ…817..135L):
Both of these papers use galpy orbit integration to integrate the orbit of NGC 1261 to investigate a possible association of this cluster with the newly discovered Phoenix stream and Eridanus-Phoenix overdensity.
20. The Proper Motion of Palomar 5, T. K. Fritz & N. Kallivayalil (2015), Astrophys. J., 811, 123 (2015ApJ…811..123F):
This paper makes use of the galpy.df.streamdf model for tidal streams to constrain the Milky Way’s gravitational potential using the kinematics of the Palomar 5 cluster and stream.
21. Spiral- and bar-driven peculiar velocities in Milky Way-sized galaxy simulations, Robert J. J. Grand, Jo Bovy, Daisuke Kawata, Jason A. S. Hunt, Benoit Famaey, Arnaud Siebert, Giacomo Monari, & Mark Cropper (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 453, 1867 (2015MNRAS.453.1867G):
Uses galpy.df.evolveddiskdf to calculate the mean non-axisymmetric velocity field due to the bar in different parts of the Milky Way.
22. Vertical kinematics of the thick disc at 4.5 ≲ R ≲ 9.5 kpc, Kohei Hattori & Gerard Gilmore (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 454, 649 (2015MNRAS.454..649H):
This paper uses galpy.potential functions to set up a realistic Milky-Way potential for investigating the kinematics of stars in the thick disk.
23. Local Stellar Kinematics from RAVE data - VI. Metallicity Gradients Based on the F-G Main-sequence Stars, O. Plevne, T. Ak, S. Karaali, S. Bilir, S. Ak, Z. F. Bostanci (2015), Pub. Astron. Soc. Aus., 32, 43 (2015PASA…32…43P):
This paper employs galpy orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to calculate orbital parameters for a sample of RAVE F and G dwarfs to investigate the metallicity gradient in the Milky Way.
24. Dynamics of stream-subhalo interactions, Jason L. Sanders, Jo Bovy, & Denis Erkal (2015), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 457, 3817 (2016MNRAS.457.3817S):
Uses and extends galpy.df.streamdf to build a generative model of the dynamical effect of sub-halo impacts on tidal streams. This new functionality is contained in galpy.df.streamgapdf, a subclass of galpy.df.streamdf, and can be used to efficiently model the effect of impacts on the present-day structure of streams in position and velocity space.
25. Extremely metal-poor stars from the cosmic dawn in the bulge of the Milky Way, L. M. Howes, A. R. Casey, M. Asplund, et al. (2015), Nature, 527, 484 (2015Natur.527..484H):
Employs galpy orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to characterize the orbits of a sample of extremely metal-poor stars found in the bulge of the Milky Way. This analysis demonstrates that the orbits of these metal-poor stars are always close to the center of the Milky Way and that these stars are therefore true bulge stars rather than halo stars passing through the bulge.
26. Detecting the disruption of dark-matter halos with stellar streams, Jo Bovy (2016), Phys. Rev. Lett., 116, 121301 (2016PhRvL.116l1301B):
Uses galpy functions in galpy.df to estimate the velocity kick imparted by a disrupting dark-matter halo on a stellar stream. Also employs galpy.orbit integration and galpy.actionAngle functions to analyze N-body simulations of such an interaction.
27. Identification of Globular Cluster Stars in RAVE data II: Extended tidal debris around NGC 3201, B. Anguiano, G. M. De Silva, K. Freeman, et al. (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 457, 2078 (2016MNRAS.457.2078A):
Employs galpy.orbit integration to study the orbits of potential tidal-debris members of NGC 3201.
28. Young and Millisecond Pulsar GeV Gamma-ray Fluxes from the Galactic Center and Beyond, Ryan M. O’Leary, Matthew D. Kistler, Matthew Kerr, & Jason Dexter (2016), Phys. Rev. D, submitted (arXiv/1601.05797):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 for orbit integration of pulsars kicked out of the central region of the Milky Way.
29. Abundances and kinematics for ten anticentre open clusters, T. Cantat-Gaudin, P. Donati, A. Vallenari, R. Sordo, A. Bragaglia, L. Magrini (2016), Astron. & Astrophys., 588, A120 (2016A&A…588A.120C):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to characterize the orbits of 10 open clusters located toward the Galactic anti-center, finding that the most distant clusters have high-eccentricity orbits.
30. A Magellanic Origin of the DES Dwarfs, P. Jethwa, D. Erkal, & V. Belokurov (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 461, 2212 (arXiv/1603.04420):
Employs the C implementations of galpy.potentials to compute forces in orbit integrations of the LMC’s satellite-galaxy population.
31. PSR J1024-0719: A Millisecond Pulsar in an Unusual Long-Period Orbit, D. L. Kaplan, T. Kupfer, D. J. Nice, et al. (2016), Astrophys. J., 826, 86 (arXiv/1604.00131):
32. A millisecond pulsar in an extremely wide binary system, C. G. Bassa, G. H. Janssen, B. W. Stappers, et al. (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 460, 2207 (arXiv/1604.00129):
Both of these papers use galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to determine the orbit of the milli-second pulsar PSR J1024−0719, a pulsar in an unusual binary system.
33. The first low-mass black hole X-ray binary identified in quiescence outside of a globular cluster, B. E. Tetarenko, A. Bahramian, R. M. Arnason, et al. (2016), Astrophys. J., 825, 10 (arXiv/1605.00270):
This paper employs galpy.orbit integration of orbits within the position-velocity uncertainty ellipse of the radio source VLA J213002.08+120904 to help characterize its nature (specifically, to rule out that it is a magnetar based on its birth location).
34. Action-based Dynamical Modelling for the Milky Way Disk, Wilma H. Trick, Jo Bovy, & Hans-Walter Rix (2016), Astrophys. J., 830, 97 (arXiv/1605.08601):
Makes use of potential models, the Staeckel actionAngle modules, and the quasiisothermal DF to develop a robust dynamical modeling approach for recovering the Milky Way’s gravitational potential from kinematics of disk stars.
35. A Dipole on the Sky: Predictions for Hypervelocity Stars from the Large Magellanic Cloud, Douglas Boubert & N. W. Evans (2016), Astrophys. J. Lett., 825, L6 (arXiv/1606.02548):
Uses galpy.orbit integration to investigate the orbits of hyper-velocity stars that could be ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud and their distribution on the sky.
36. Linear perturbation theory for tidal streams and the small-scale CDM power spectrum, Jo Bovy, Denis Erkal, & Jason L. Sanders (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1606.03470):
Uses and extends galpy.df.streamdf and galpy.df.streamgapdf to quickly compute the effect of impacts from dark-matter subhalos on stellar streams and investigates the structure of perturbed streams and how this structure relates to the CDM subhalo mass spectrum.
37. Local Stellar Kinematics from RAVE data - VII. Metallicity Gradients from Red Clump Stars, O. Onal Tas, S. Bilir, G. M. Seabroke, S. Karaali, S. Ak, T. Ak, & Z. F. Bostanci (2016), Pub. Astron. Soc. Aus., 33, e044 (arXiv/1607.07049):
Employs galpy orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to calculate orbital parameters for a sample of red clump stars in RAVE to investigate the metallicity gradient in the Milky Way.
38. Study of Eclipsing Binary and Multiple Systems in OB Associations IV: Cas OB6 Member DN Cas, V. Bakis, H. Bakis, S. Bilir, Z. Eker (2016), Pub. Astron. Soc. Aus., 33, e046 (arXiv/1608.00456):
Uses galpy orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to calculate the orbit and orbital parameters of the spectroscopic binary DN Cas in the Milky Way.
39. The shape of the inner Milky Way halo from observations of the Pal 5 and GD-1 stellar streams, Jo Bovy, Anita Bahmanyar, Tobias K. Fritz, & Nitya Kallivayalil (2016), Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1609.01298):
Makes use of the galpy.df.streamdf model for a tidal stream to constrain the shape and mass of the Milky Way’s dark-matter halo. Introduced galpy.potential.TriaxialNFWPotential.
40. The Rotation-Metallicity Relation for the Galactic Disk as Measured in the Gaia DR1 TGAS and APOGEE Data, Carlos Allende Prieto, Daisuke Kawata, & Mark Cropper (2016), Astron. & Astrophys., in press (arXiv/1609.07821):
Employs orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to calculate the orbits of a sample of stars in common between Gaia DR1’s TGAS and APOGEE to study the rotation-metallicity relation for the Galactic disk.
41. Detection of a dearth of stars with zero angular momentum in the solar neighbourhood, Jason A. S. Hunt, Jo Bovy, & Raymond Carlberg (2016), Astrophys. J. Lett., 832, L25 (arXiv/1610.02030):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 plus a hard Galactic core to calculate the orbits of stars in the solar neighborhood and predict how many of them should be lost to chaos.
42. Differences in the rotational properties of multiple stellar populations in M 13: a faster rotation for the “extreme” chemical subpopulation, M. J. Cordero, V. Hénault-Brunet, C. A. Pilachowski, E. Balbinot, C. I. Johnson, & A. L. Varri (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1610.09374):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit of the globular cluster M13 and in particular whether escaping stars from the cluster could contaminate the measurement of the rotation of different populations in the cluster.
43. Using the Multi-Object Adaptive Optics demonstrator RAVEN to observe metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic Centre, Masen Lamb, Kim Venn, David Andersen, et al. (2016), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1611.02712):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to characterize the orbits of three very metal-poor stars observed toward the Galactic center, to determine whether they are likely bulge members.
44. The Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE): Fifth Data Release, Andrea Kunder, Georges Kordopatis, Matthias Steinmetz, et al. (2016), Astron. J., in press (arXiv/1609.03210):
Employs galpy.orbit integration to characterize the orbits of stars in the RAVE survey.
45. The Proper Motion of Pyxis: the first use of Adaptive Optics in tandem with HST on a faint halo object, Tobias K. Fritz, Sean Linden, Paul Zivick, et al. (2016), Astrophys. J., submitted (arXiv/1611.08598):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit of the globular cluster Pyxis using its newly measured proper motion and to search for potential streams associated with the cluster.
46. The Galactic distribution of X-ray binaries and its implications for compact object formation and natal kicks, Serena Repetto, Andrei P. Igoshev, & Gijs Nelemans (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1701.01347):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 and that of Paczynski (1990) to study the orbits of X-ray binaries under different assumptions about their formation mechanism and natal velocity kicks.
47. Kinematics of Subluminous O and B Stars by Surface Helium Abundance, P. Martin, C. S. Jeffery, Naslim N., & V. M. Woolf (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1701.03026):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbits of different types of low-mass core-helium-burning stars.
48. Is there a disk of satellites around the Milky Way?, Moupiya Maji, Qirong Zhu, Federico Marinacci, & Yuexing Li (2017), submitted (arXiv/1702.00485):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to predict the future paths of 11 classical Milky-Way satellites to investigate whether they remain in a disk configuration.
49. The devil is in the tails: the role of globular cluster mass evolution on stream properties, Eduardo Balbinot & Mark Gieles (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1702.02543):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 of globular clusters in the Milky-Way halo. These integrations are used to investigate the clusters’ mass loss due to tidal stripping, taking the effects of collisional dynamics in the cluster into account, and to evaluate the visibility of their (potential) tidal tails.
50. Absolute Ages and Distances of 22 GCs using Monte Carlo Main-Sequence Fitting, Erin M. O’Malley, Christina Gilligan, & Brian Chaboyer (2017), Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1703.01915):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 of globular clusters in the Milky Way, to study their orbits and classify them as disk or halo clusters.
51. Siriusly, a newly identified intermediate-age Milky Way stellar cluster: A spectroscopic study of Gaia 1, J. D. Simpson, G. M. De Silva, S. L. Martell, D. B. Zucker, A. M. N. Ferguson, E. J. Bernard, M. Irwin, J. Penarrubia, & E. Tolstoy (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1703.03823):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit in the Milky Way potential of a newly-confirmed stellar cluster found in the Gaia data.
52. Action-based Dynamical Modeling for the Milky Way Disk: The Influence of Spiral Arms, Wilma H. Trick, Jo Bovy, Elena D’Onghia, & Hans-Walter Rix (2017), Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1703.05970):
Uses various potential models, the Staeckel actionAngle modules, and the quasiisothermal DF to test a robust dynamical modeling approach for recovering the Milky Way’s gravitational potential from kinematics of disk stars against numerical simulations with spiral arms.
53. A spectroscopic study of the elusive globular cluster ESO452-SC11 and its surroundings, Andreas Koch, Camilla Juul Hansen, & Andrea Kunder (2017), Astron. & Astrophys., submitted (arXiv/1703.06921):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit in the Milky Way potential of two candidate cluster members of the bulge globular cluster ESO452-SC11.
54. A Halo Substructure in Gaia Data Release 1, G. C. Myeong, N. W. Evans, V. Belokurov, S. E. Koposov, & J. L. Sanders (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1704.01363):
Uses galpy.actionAngle.actionAngleAdiabatic routines to compute the actions using the adiabatic approximation for 268,588 stars in Gaia DR1 TGAS with line-of-sight velocities from spectroscopic surveys. Detects a co-moving group of 14 stars on strongly radial orbits and computes their orbits using MWPotential2014.
55. An artificial neural network to discover Hypervelocity stars: Candidates in Gaia DR1/ TGAS, T. Marchetti, E. M. Rossi, G. Kordopatis, A. G. A. Brown, A. Rimoldi, E. Starkenburg, K. Youakim, & R. Ashley (2017), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1704.07990):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in a custom Milky-Way-like potential built from galpy.potential models to investigate the orbits of hypervelocity-star candidates in Gaia DR1.
56. GalRotpy: an educational tool to understand and parametrize the rotation curve and gravitational potential of disk-like galaxies, Andrés Granados, Lady-J. Henao-O., Santiago Vanegas, & Leonardo Castañeda (2017; arXiv/1705.01665):
These authors build an interactive tool to decompose observed rotation curves into bulge, disk (Miyamoto-Nagai or exponential), and NFW halo components on top of galpy.potential routines.
57. The AMBRE Project: formation and evolution of the Milky Way disc, V. Grisoni, E. Spitoni, F. Matteucci, A. Recio-Blanco, P. de Laverny, M. Hayden, S. Mikolaitis, & C. C. Worley (2017) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1706.02614):
Uses galpy to compute orbital parameters for stars in the AMBRE sample of high-resolution spectra and uses these orbital parameters to aid in the comparison between the data and chemical-evolution models.
58. ESO452-SC11: The lowest mass globular cluster with a potential chemical inhomogeneity, Jeffrey D. Simpson, Gayandhi De Silva, Sarah L. Martell, Colin A. Navin, & Daniel B. Zucker (2017) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1708.06875):
Uses galpy.orbit in MWPotential2014 to compute the orbit of the MW bulge globular cluster ESO452-SC11.
59. Detailed chemical abundance analysis of the thick disk star cluster Gaia 1, Andreas Koch, Terese T. Hansen, & Andrea Kunder (2017) Astron. & Astrophys., in press (arXiv/1709.04022):
Employs galpy.orbit integration to compute the orbits of four red-giant members of the Gaia 1 Milky Way star cluster, finding that the orbits of these stars are similar to those of the oldest stars in the Milky Way’s disk.
60. Proper motions in the VVV Survey: Results for more than 15 million stars across NGC 6544, R. Contreras Ramos, M. Zoccali, F. Rojas, A. Rojas-Arriagada, M. Gárate, P. Huijse, F. Gran, M. Soto, A.A.R. Valcarce, P. A. Estévez, & D. Minniti (2017) Astron. & Astrophys., in press (arXiv/1709.07919):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to calculate the orbit of NGC 6544, a Milky-Way globular cluster, using a newly determined proper motion, finding that it is likely a halo globular cluster based on its orbit.
61. How to make a mature accreting magnetar, A. P. Igoshev & S. B. Popov (2017) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., in press (arXiv/1709.10385):
Employs galpy.orbit integration of the magnetar candidate 4U 0114+65 in the potential model from Irrgang et al. (2013) to aid in the determination of its likely age.
62. iota Horologii is unlikely to be an evaporated Hyades star, I. Ramirez, D. Yong, E. Gutierrez, M. Endl, D. L. Lambert, J.-D. Do Nascimento Jr (2017) Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1710.05930):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to determine the approximate orbit of the star iota Horologii, a planet-hosting suspected former member of the Hyades cluster, to investigate whether it could have coincided with the Hyades cluster in the past.
63. Confirming chemical clocks: asteroseismic age dissection of the Milky Way disk(s), V. Silva Aguirre, M. Bojsen-Hansen, D. Slumstrup, et al. (2017) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1710.09847):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to compute the orbits of a sample of 1989 red giants with spectroscopic and asteroseismic data from the APOKASC catalog, to shed light on the properties of stellar populations defined by age and metallicity.
64. The universality of the rapid neutron-capture process revealed by a possible disrupted dwarf galaxy star, Andrew R. Casey & Kevin C. Schlaufman (2017) Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1711.04776):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit and its uncertainty of 2MASS J151113.24–213003.0, an extremely metal-poor field star with measureable r-process abundances, and of other similar metal-poor stars. The authors find that all of these stars are on highly eccentric orbits, possibly indicating that they originated in dwarf galaxies.
65. The Gaia-ESO Survey: Churning through the Milky Way, M. R. Hayden, A. Recio-Blanco, P. de Laverny, et al. (2017) Astron. & Astrophys., in press (arXiv/1711.05751):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to study the orbital characteristics (eccentricity, pericentric radius) of a sample of 2,364 stars observed in the Milky Way as part of the Gaia-ESO survey.
66. The Evolution of the Galactic Thick Disk with the LAMOST Survey, Chengdong Li & Gang Zhao (2017) Astrophys. J., 850, 25 (2017ApJ…850…25L):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbital characteristics (eccentricity, maximum height above the plane, angular momentum) of a sample of about 2,000 stars in the thicker-disk component of the Milky Way.
67. The Orbit and Origin of the Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxy Segue 1, T. K. Fritz, M. Lokken, N. Kallivayalil, A. Wetzel, S. T. Linden, P. Zivick, & E. J. Tollerud (2017) Astrophys. J., submitted (arXiv/1711.09097):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 and a version of this potential with a more massive dark-matter halo to investigate the orbit and origin of the dwarf-spheroidal galaxy Segue 1 using a newly measured proper motion with SDSS and LBC data.
68. Prospects for detection of hypervelocity stars with Gaia, T. Marchetti, O. Contigiani, E. M. Rossi, J. G. Albert, A. G. A. Brown, & A. Sesana (2017) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1711.11397):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in a custom Milky-Way-like potential built from galpy.potential models to create mock catalogs of hypervelocity stars in the Milky Way for different ejection mechanisms and study the prospects of their detection with Gaia.
69. The AMBRE project: The thick thin disk and thin thick disk of the Milky Way, Hayden, M. R., Recio-Blanco, A., de Laverny, P., Mikolaitis, S., & Worley, C. C. (2017) Astron. & Astrophys., 608, L1 (arXiv/1712.02358):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to characterize the orbits of 494 nearby stars analyzed as part of the AMBRE project to learn about their distribution within the Milky Way.
70. KELT-21b: A Hot Jupiter Transiting the Rapidly-Rotating Metal-Poor Late-A Primary of a Likely Hierarchical Triple System, Marshall C. Johnson, Joseph E. Rodriguez, George Zhou, et al. (2017) Astrophys. J., submitted (arXiv/1712.03241):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the Galactic orbit of KELT-21b, a hot jupiter around a low-metallicity A-type star.
71. GalDynPsr: A package to estimate dynamical contributions in the rate of change of the period of radio pulsars, Dhruv Pathak & Manjari Bagchi (2017) (arXiv/1712.06590):
Presents a python package to compute contributions to the GR spin-down of pulsars from the differential galactic acceleration between the Sun and the pulsar. The package uses MWPotential2014 and galpy.potential functions to help compute this.
72. Local Stellar Kinematics from RAVE data – VIII. Effects of the Galactic Disc Perturbations on Stellar Orbits of Red Clump Stars, O. Onal Tas, S. Bilir, & O. Plevne (2018) Astrophys. Sp. Sc., in press (arXiv/1801.02170):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 and the non-axisymmetric DehnenBarPotential and SteadyLogSpiralPotential to study the orbits of Milky-Way red-clump stars.
73. The VMC survey XXVIII. Improved measurements of the proper motion of the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae, F. Niederhofer, M.-R. L. Cioni, S. Rubele, et al. (2018) Astron. & Astrophys., in press (arXiv/1801.07738):
Uses galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbit of the cluster 47 Tuc from a newly measured proper motion, finding that the orbit has an eccentricity of about 0.2 and reaches up to 3.6 kpc above the Galactic midplane.
74. Characterising Open Clusters in the solar neighbourhood with the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution, T. Cantat-Gaudin, A. Vallenari, R. Sordo, F. Pensabene, A. Krone-Martins, A. Moitinho, C. Jordi, L. Casamiquela, L. Balaguer-Núnez, C. Soubiran, N. Brouillet (2018) Astron. & Astrophys., submitted (arXiv/1801.10042):
Employs galpy.orbit integration in MWPotential2014 to investigate the orbits of a sample of 128 open clusters with astrometry from the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution.
75. Fast estimation of orbital parameters in Milky-Way-like potentials, J. Ted Mackereth & Jo Bovy (2018) Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., submitted (arXiv/1802.02592):
Introduces the galpy.actionAngle.EccZmaxRperiRap and related galpy.orbit.Orbit methods for the fast estimation of the orbital parameters (eccentricity, maximum vertical excursion, and peri/apocenter) in Milky-Way potentials. See this section of the documentation for more info.
76. HI Kinematics Along The Minor Axis of M82, Paul Martini, Adam K. Leroy, Jeffrey G. Mangum, Alberto Bolatto, Katie M. Keating, Karin Sandstrom, & Fabian Walter (2018) Astrophys. J., in press (arXiv/1802.04359):
Use galpy.potential components to create a mass model for M82 that consists of a HernquistPotential bulge, MN3ExponentialDiskPotential disk, and NFWPotential dark-matter halo by matching photometric and rotation-curve data.