GALA: an automatic tool for the abundance analysis of stellar spectra

TL;DR

GALA is an automated Fortran tool that efficiently derives stellar atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances from spectra, suitable for large surveys and multi-object spectrographs.

Contribution

It introduces an automated, robust method for deriving stellar parameters and abundances, optimizing model atmospheres with error estimation, tailored for large spectral datasets.

Findings

Accurately derives atmospheric parameters and abundances

Performs well with synthetic and observed spectra

Enables rapid analysis of large stellar samples

Abstract

GALA is a freely distributed Fortran code to derive automatically the atmospheric parameters (temperature, gravity, microturbulent velocity and overall metallicity) and abundances for individual species of stellar spectra using the classical method based on the equivalent widths of metallic lines. The abundances of individual spectral lines are derived by using the WIDTH9 code developed by R. L. Kurucz. GALA is designed to obtain the best model atmosphere, by optimizing temperature, surface gravity, microturbulent velocity and metallicity, after rejecting the discrepant lines. Finally, it computes accurate internal errors for each atmospheric parameter and abundance. The code permits to obtain chemical abundances and atmospheric parameters for large stellar samples in a very short time, thus making GALA an useful tool in the epoch of the multi-object spectrographs and large surveys. An extensive set of tests with both synthetic and observed spectra is performed and discussed to explore the capabilities and robustness of the code.