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Documentation

Find information, examples, FAQs and extensive descriptions of the data, curated by the survey teams.

GALAH logo

GALAH

The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES survey is collecting stellar parameters and abundances for one million stars in the Milky Way. GALAH yields a comprehensive view of the formation & evolution of the Galaxy.

Total Data Releases

4

Total Categories

4

Total Articles

24

Authors

146

Overview

The GALAH Survey

The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is a large-scale stellar spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way, designed to deliver complementary chemical information to a large number of stars covered by the Gaia mission.

GALAH makes use of the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This unique instrument employs the Two Degree Field (2dF) fibre positioner on the Anglo-Australian Telescope to provide multiobject (n~392), high-resolution (R~28000) spectra optimized for elemental abundance studies for up to 31 elements in four optical windows. The HERMES instrument was built specifically for the GALAH survey.

These pages provide information on the survey and its data products, in particular, our current data release:

Information about our previous data releases are also available:

Questions about GALAH? Email galahsurvey@gmail.com.

DR4

GALAH Data Release 4

The GALAH survey published our fourth data release on 1 October 2024. It contains data for 917,588 stars, with reduced 1-D spectra, stellar parameters and up to 31 elemental abundances per star.

Just want the main DR4 results catalogue? Download GALAH_DR4_main_allstar.fits from here.

GALAH DR4 sky map

DR3

GALAH Data Release 3

The GALAH survey published our third data release on 6 November 2020. It contains data for almost 600,000 stars, with reduced 1-D spectra, stellar parameters and up to 30 elemental abundances per star.

Just want the main DR3 results catalogue? Download GALAH_DR3_main_allstar_v2.fits from here.

Detailed information DR3 can be found on these pages:

GALAH DR3 Sky Coverage

DR2

GALAH Data Release 2

This release is deprecated and superseded by Data Release 3.

The GALAH survey published our second data release on 18 April 2018. It contains data for 342,682 stars with up to 23 elemental abundances per star.

Update: On 9 May 2018 we released the GALAH survey DR2.1. This contains a fix to three columns related to radial velocities, populates the gaia_dr2_id column, and adds a collection of high-SNR median spectra. See the changelog for more details.

The catalogue is accessible through:

There are a number of important documents that describe this release:

Questions about DR2? Email galahsurvey@gmail.com

DR1

GALAH Data Release 1

This release is deprecated and superseded by Data Releases 2 and 3.

The GALAH survey published our first data release on 9 September 2016. It contains data for 9860 stars that were likely to be included in the first Gaia data release as part of its TGAS data set.

Brief overview of DR1.

Questions about DR1? Email galahsurvey@gmail.com

Latest updates view all
Table schema Oct. 11, 2020, 3:48 a.m. smartell
Sample queries Oct. 11, 2020, 3:49 a.m. smartell
Changelog Oct. 11, 2020, 3:50 a.m. sanjibsharma
Acknowledgements Oct. 11, 2020, 3:51 a.m. jeffreysimpson
Value-Added Catalogues Oct. 11, 2020, 3:52 a.m. smartell

GALAH Documentation

 GALAH Data Release 3
Documentation for the Third Data Release of the GALAH Survey
Articles
GALAH+ Data Release 3 Overview jeffreysimpson Nov. 6, 2020 Sept. 8, 2021, 11:39 p.m.
Best practices for GALAH DR3 jeffreysimpson Feb. 7, 2021 Sept. 8, 2021, 11:40 p.m.
Need Help? jeffreysimpson Nov. 6, 2020 Nov. 7, 2020, 11:57 p.m.
GALAH DR3 catalogues jeffreysimpson Nov. 6, 2020 Sept. 8, 2021, 11:41 p.m.
GALAH DR3 spectra jeffreysimpson Nov. 6, 2020 Sept. 8, 2021, 11:40 p.m.
Showing 5 of 13 view all
 GALAH Data Release 2
Documentation for the Second Data Release of the GALAH Survey
Articles
GALAH Data Release 2 Overview smartell Oct. 11, 2020 Dec. 14, 2020, 10:19 p.m.
Changelog sanjibsharma May 5, 2018 Oct. 11, 2020, 3:50 a.m.
Value-Added Catalogues smartell April 18, 2018 Oct. 11, 2020, 3:52 a.m.
Sample queries smartell March 27, 2018 Oct. 11, 2020, 3:49 a.m.
Science goals smartell March 26, 2018 Nov. 2, 2020, 9:50 p.m.
Showing 5 of 10 view all
 GALAH Data Release 1
Documentation for the First Data Release of the GALAH Survey
Articles
GALAH Data Release 1 Overview jeffreysimpson Sept. 9, 2016 Dec. 14, 2020, 10:19 p.m.
 GALAH Data Release 4
Details on GALAH DR4
No articles for GALAH Data Release 4 have been added yet!