David Sand’s Website
I am an observational astronomer, doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. As part of the first two years of this position, I worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Before that, I was a Chandra Fellow at the University of Arizona. I received my PhD at the California Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Richard Ellis.
My astrophysics research is driven by the scientific questions at hand, rather than a specific technique. Some topics include:
The structure and star formation history of the faintest Milky Way Satellites
The Multi-Epoch Nearby Cluster Survey -- A supernova and weak lensing survey in z~0.1 galaxy clusters.
A new survey of two nearby galaxies -- NGC 5128 and NGC 253 -- to search for associated dwarf galaxies and stellar streams.
The dark matter density profile in galaxy clusters.
Instrument scientist for FLOYDS -- a new spectrograph for the robotic Faulkes Telescope North
Brief Academic Bio and Research Topics
The main focus of my research is at the intersection of baryonic and dark matter astrophysics. What is a galaxy? How does the presence of dark matter and baryons effect the central structure and satellite galaxies we observe within a dark matter halo? How does the Universe become chemically enriched?
My ADS publication list is here
A pdf version of my CV is here
The extremely elongated Milky Way satellite, Hercules (Sand et al. 2009)
A hostless, intracluster supernova discovered in the Multi-Epoch Nearby Cluster Survey (Sand et al. 2010)
