Nathan Sandford

Nathan Sandford (he/him)

NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz

Publications

A complete and up-to-date list of my publications is available on ADS and Google Scholar.

First-Author Publications

  • The Metal-poor Halo of Ursa Minor
    • Sandford, N., et al., in DESI Milky Way Survey working group review
  • Chemodynamics of Boötes I with S⁵: Revised Velocity Gradient, Dark Matter Density, and Galactic Chemical Evolution Constraints
  • Strong Outflows and Inefficient Star Formation in the Reionization-era Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxy Eridanus II
  • Validating Stellar Abundance Measurements from Multi-Resolution Spectroscopy
  • Forecasting Chemical Abundance Precision for Extragalactic Stellar Archaeology

Second- to Fifth-Author Publications

  • The unusual α-richness of dwarf galaxy stellar streams
    • Mura-Guzman, A., Ji, A., Sandford, N., et al., submitted to MNRAS
  • The Binary Fraction of Stars in the Dwarf Galaxy Ursa Minor via Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
    • Qiu, T., Wang, W., Koposov, S., Li, T., Sandford, N., et al. 2026, ApJ, 1000, 33
  • DESI Data Release 1: Stellar Catalogue
    • Koposov, S., Li, T., Allende Prieto, C., Medina, G., Sandford, N., et al. 2026, OJA, 9
  • Modeling the Ages and Chemical Abundances of Elliptical Galaxies
    • Gountanis, N., Weinberg, D., Beverage, A., Sandford, N., et al. 2025, ApJ, 985, 184
  • A Panchromatic Study of Massive Stars in the Extremely Metal-Poor Local Group Dwarf Galaxy Leo A
    • Gull, M., Weisz, D., Senchyna, P., Sandford, N., et al. 2022, ApJ, 941, 206
  • Abundance Estimates for 16 Elements in 6 Million Stars from LAMOST DR5 Low-Resolution Spectra
    • Xiang, M., Ting, Y.-S., Rix, H.-W., Sandford, N., et al. 2019, ApJS, 245, 34

Contributing-Author Publications

  • From observing strategies to velocity dispersion bias: forward modeling unresolved binaries in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
  • Boötes III is a Tidally Disrupting Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy on an Eccentric Polar Orbit
  • Dark Matter in Draco and Boötes I: Hints of a Core in an Ultra-Faint Dwarf from Simulation-Based Inference
  • Constraining the Galactic bar using the M92 stellar stream
  • Characterizing the GD-1 Stream with DESI Year 3 Data
  • The mass of the Milky Way from outer halo stars measured by DESI DR1
  • Planetary Accretion Is Less Frequent in Wide Binaries: Evidence from Metal-Enriched White Dwarfs in DESI DR1
  • It’s a matter of time: Empirical Constraints on Supernova Yields and Delay Times from Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
  • The Kinematically Hot, Extremely Metal-Poor C-19 Stellar Stream in DESI DR2
  • Signatures of a Tidally Induced Spiral Arm at the Anticenter of the Milky Way and a Kinematically Extended Anticenter Stream Using DESI DR2
  • Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
    • DESI Collaboration, et al. (incl. Sandford, N.) 2026, AJ, 171, 285
  • The Milky Way stellar halo is twisted and doubly broken: insights from DESI DR2 Milky Way Survey observation
  • The Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy in the First Year of DESI Data
  • SN 2023ixf in the Pinwheel Galaxy M101: From Shock Breakout to the Nebular Phase
  • Stellar Metallicities and Gradients in the Faint M31 Satellites Andromeda XVI and Andromeda XXVIII
  • Stellar Metallicities and Gradients in the Isolated, Quenched Low-Mass Galaxy Tucana
  • Metallicity Distribution Function of 13 Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Candidates from Hubble Space Telescope Narrow-band Imaging
  • SN 2023ixf in Messier 101: Photo-ionization of Dense, Close-in Circumstellar Material in a Nearby Type II Supernova
  • From Carbon to Cobalt: Chemical compositions and ages of z ∼ 0.7 quiescent galaxies
  • Metallicity Distribution Function of the Eridanus II Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy from Hubble Space Telescope Narrow-band Imaging

Non-Refereed Publications

  • HRMOS White Paper: Science Motivation
  • The Keck-FOBOS spectroscopic facility: conceptual design
    • Bundy, K., et al. (incl. Sandford, N.) 2020, SPIE, 11447

Software

More information about these packages is available on my Software page.

  • Flexible ANalytic Chemical Evolution (fanCE)
  • Chem-I-Calc: The Chemical Information Calculator
  • PypeIt: Release 1.0.0
  • ChempyMulti: Multi-star Bayesian inference with Chempy