Using GAMA data in your research
One of the objectives of the GAMA project is to create a benchmark database of the low-redshift Universe with outstanding legacy value to both the galaxy evolution and large-scale structure communities. In keeping with this commitment the GAMA team welcomes and actively encourages the use of GAMA data by the broader community.
To this end we provide several ways in which you can gain access to GAMA data for your own research. First of all, the simplest way is to use the latest public release of GAMA data. These data are freely available to anyone. All we ask is that you cite the appropriate papers and acknowledge GAMA. As an alternative to using the public data you can either request access to a specific (unpublished) result derived from GAMA data, or else gain access to the full GAMA dataset by entering a collaboration with the GAMA team.
Quick summary for the impatient: Need data? Don't be shy, just ask us.
Using specific GAMA results
There are many cirumstances in which one would like to incorporate results from the literature in one's own work, e.g. when comparing model predictions to observational results, or when comparing results derived from different datasets. In these cases one is essentially interested in obtaining (additional) 'points on a plot' as opposed to spectra or catalogues. GAMA would like to facilitate the use of its results in this way, and thus we welcome requests for:
- published results: data points from a published plot in electronic format for easy reproduction in your own publication;
- technically unpublished results: the same as above, but for a slight variant of the analysis that produced these points (e.g. for a slightly different sample selection); results that have been submitted for publication;
- unpublished results: genuinely new and unpublished results.
Your request will be promptly reviewed by GAMA's Scientific and Strategic Advisory Committee. Requests in categegories 1. and 2. above will be approved by default and forwarded to the appropriate GAMA team member. Requests in category 3. will obviously be considered more carefully. Note that no actual data or data products will be provided under this scheme. Any GAMA results to be used will be produced by the relevant GAMA team member, without any GAMA data or data products being passed on. In other words, under this scheme we will happily provide plots, or data points for plots, but not spectra or catalogues. Any publications incorporating GAMA results obtained in this way should cite all relevant papers and acknowledge GAMA. Furthermore, co-authorship should be offered to those GAMA team members who provided the data products being used, and to those who actually responded to the request.
Collaborating with the GAMA team
For those that need more we offer the opportunity of a genuine scientific collaboration with the GAMA team. Entering a collaboration will gain you unlimited access to the complete dataset and data products currently available to the GAMA team for a specific, pre-defined scientific purpose. In due course, all GAMA data will be made public, but at present the GAMA-internal team database contains data over a wider area and to greater depth, as well as additional data products, compared to what is currently publicly available. The table below provides a complete list of the data products currently available in the GAMA team database. A collaboration with the GAMA team will thus gain you a significant advantage in terms of the data that you will be able to use for your project.
To initiate a collaboration you should first identify and approach a GAMA team member to act as your primary GAMA collaborator and contact person (see also the list of contacts in the table below). Once agreed, this person will submit a detailed description of your project to GAMA's Scientific and Strategic Advisory Committee for approval. Following its approval, your project is now 'reserved' for you, and your collaborator is authorised to provide you with all of the data that you need for this particular project. In return we ask that interested GAMA team members will be allowed to participate in your project, and we require that any papers resulting from the collaboration are subject to the GAMA co-authorship rules (in short: those that have contributed significantly to the data or data products being used, or to the scientific content of your paper, have a right to sign up). Once your project has been completed (usually by publishing a paper), the collaboration expires.
We stress that the above process has been extensively tried and tested. There are about 20 collaboration projects in progress right now, and 11 have already been successfully completed.
Currently available data products
Below is a list of the data products that are curently available in the private, GAMA-internal team database. These data are considerably more extensive than what is currently publicly available. The acronym 'DMU' stands for 'Data Management Unit'. A DMU is simply a GAMA-internal organisational unit that provides a coherent set of data products (usually consisting of one or more tables). If you would like to initiate a collaboration project (see above) to use any of these data products, or if you would like to obtain more information about them, please use the contact links provided. For more general enquiries please contact gama@gama-survey.org.
| DMU name | Contact | Description |
|---|---|---|
| EqInputCat | Ivan Baldry | This DMU provides various input catalogues for the GAMA II equatorial survey regions. |
| G02InputCat | Ivan Baldry | This DMU provides various input catalogues for the G02 survey region. |
| G23InputCat | Amanda Moffett | This DMU provides various input catalogues for the G23 survey region. |
| gkvInputCat | Sabine Bellstedt | This DMU provides the GAMA III input catalogue for the equatorial and G23 survey regions. |
| gkvFarIR | Sabine Bellstedt | This DMU provides ProFound-derived photometry in the W3-S500 bands for the equatorial and G23 survey regions, complementing the FUV-W2 photometry provided by the gkvInputCat DMU. |
| ExternalSpec | Joe Liske | This DMU collects spectra in the GAMA survey regions from existing spectroscopic surveys such as the SDSS. |
| LTObs | Ivan Baldry | This DMU provides spectra and redshifts for a small number of very bright objects. The spectra were observed with the Liverpool Telescope (LT). |
| SpecCat | Joe Liske | This DMU provides the final spectra and redshift catalogues, including GAMA AAT and external data. |
| LocalFlowCorrection | Ivan Baldry | This DMU performs local flow correction, and provides redshifts in different frames of reference for all GAMA II galaxies. |
| kCorrections | Jon Loveday | This DMU provides k-corrections in the GALEX FUV and NUV bands, the SDSS ugriz bands and the UKIDSS YJHK bands for all GAMA II galaxies with redshifts. |
| PhotoZ | Peder Norberg | This DMU provides photometric redshifts for all GAMA objects in the equatorial survey regions. |
| EAZYPhotoZ | Edward Taylor | This DMU provides photometric redshift estimates for all GAMA III photometric objects in the equatorial and G23 survey regions, i.e. for all objects in gkvInputCat, which have been derived using the EAZY photometric redshift code. |
| SFMPhotoZ | Sabine Bellstedt | This DMU provides photometric redshift estimates for all GAMA III Main Survey galaxies in the equatorial and G23 survey regions, which have been derived using the Scaled Flux Matching (SFM) technique. |
| ApMatchedPhotom | Simon Driver | This DMU provides aperture matched ugrizZYJHK photometry from SDSS and VIKING data for the GAMA II equatorial regions. |
| XXLPhotometry | Joe Liske | This DMU provides XMM-Newton x-ray photometry for XMM-detected GAMA galaxies and clusters in the G02 survey region, as delivered by the GAMA/XXL Matching Group. |
| GalexPhotometry | Ellen Andrae | This DMU provides GALEX NUV and FUV photometry for the GAMA II equatorial regions. |
| WISEPhotometry | Michelle Cluver | This DMU provides WISE IR photometry for the GAMA II equatorial regions. |
| HATLASPhotometry | Joe Liske | This DMU provides Herschel FIR photometry for Herschel-detected GAMA objects, as delivered by the GAMA/H-ATLAS Matching Group. |
| PanchromaticPhotom | Simon Driver | This DMU provides a compilation of the UV, optical, NIR and MIR photometry provided by the GalexPhotometry, ApMatchedPhotom, and WISEPhotometry DMUs, along with FIR/sub-mm photometry from Herschel data for all galaxies in the GAMA II equatorial survey regions. |
| LambdarPhotometry | Angus Wright | This DMU provides 21-band photometry for the GAMA II equatorial survey regions, derived using the LAMBDAR code. The photometry is aperture-matched and deblended, and the variations of the PSF and pixel scale across the various bands are correctly accounted for. |
| SersicPhotometry | Lee Kelvin | This DMU provides a single-component Sersic fit to the 2D surface brightness distribution in the SDSS ugriz, UKIDSS-LAS YJHK and VIKING ZYJHK bands of every object in the GAMA II equatorial survey regions. |
| MegaMorph | Rebecca Kennedy | This DMU provides the results of fitting both a single Sersic component model as well as a two-component bulge-disk model to the 2D surface brightness distributions of galaxies in the GAMA I G09 survey region using the MegaMorph multi-band fitting method. |
| BDDecomp | Sarah Casura | This DMU provides single-Sersic fits and bulge-disk decompositions for ~13,000 galaxies with z < 0.08 in the GAMA II equatorial regions in all 9 optical and NIR bands covered by KiDS and VIKING (ugriZYJHKs). |
| VisualMorphology | Simon Driver | This DMU provides a number of visual morphological classifications performed by various people for various samples of GAMA II galaxies in the equatorial survey regions. |
| gkvMorphology | Simon Driver | This DMU provides visual morphological classifications for all GAMA III Main Survey galaxies in the equatorial and G23 survey regions with r < 19.65 mag and spectroscopic or photometric redshifts <= 0.08. |
| SpecLineSFR | Matt Owers | This DMU provides line flux and equivalent width measurements for all GAMA II spectra. |
| VelocityDispersions | Francesco D’Eugenio | This DMU provides stellar and gas velocity dispersions for nearly all GAMA II spectra with S/N > 10. |
| StellarMasses | Edward Taylor | This DMU provides stellar masses, restframe photometry, and other ancillary stellar population parameters from stellar population fits to multiband SEDs for all objects with D > 0 across the five GAMA survey regions. |
| MagPhys | Simon Driver | This DMU provides physical stellar population and ISM parameters for galaxies in the GAMA II equatorial survey regions. |
| EnvironmentMeasures | Sarah Brough | This DMU provides several different metrics of the local environment of GAMA II galaxies: the surface density, the number of galaxies within a cylinder, and the adaptive Gaussian density parameter. |
| GroupFinding | Aaron Robotham | This DMU provides the GAMA Galaxy Group Catalogue (G3C) for the GAMA II equatorial and G02 survey regions. |
| FilamentFinding | Mehmet Alpaslan | This DMU identifies large scale structure in the GAMA II equatorial regions, classifying groups and galaxies as belonging to filaments or tendrils, or as being void galaxies. |
| GeometricEnvironments | Lizzie Eardley | This DMU identifies the cosmic web of large scale structure within the GAMA II equatorial survey regions by classifying the geometric environment of each point in space as either a void, a sheet, a filament or a knot. |
| SAMI | Joe Liske | This DMU provides publicly available data from the SAMI survey. |
| Randoms | Daniel Farrow | This DMU provides a large set of random galaxies that fill the GAMA II equatorial survey regions with the same selection function as the real galaxies. |
| RadialDensity | Jon Loveday | This DMU provides the radial density variation of galaxies in the GAMA II equatorial survey regions. |
