Launch ZARTH and point your phone to the night sky
Catch any cosmic transient that appears in your field of view
Earn points for the transients you catch
Many people look up at the night sky and think of it as this calm, serene place. It is not! Stars die violent deaths as supernovae, monster black holes eat anything that gets too close and star couples dance the spiraling dance of death. Our eyes don't see most of these events, but our telescopes do. ZARTH brings real astronomical data about such objects straight to the palm of your hand, allowing you to "catch" and explore them.
ZARTH is the ZTF Augmented Reality Transient Hunter, an app developed by astronomers and astronomy students, for everyone interested in the constantly changing universe. ZARTH lets you hunt for transients using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory. Point your phone to the night sky and find what transients the universe is displaying every night.
Swiftly choose which transients to catch. Not all transients are created equal, some are more valuable than others
The transients that appear in the app are real cosmic events observed every night by ZTF - one of the most advanced survey telescopes in the world
Kids know it all too well. We learn best when we play! ZARTH offers options to learn more about the transients you catch and go as deep as you like
Our computers are great at crunching numbers, but when it comes to vision and pattern recognition, the human eye remain the champion! ZARTH will soon implement features that record your feedback to help astronomers.
ZARTH is literally for everyone with a cell phone who loves the cosmos. Most of the time when you look up you see the static universe, stars and planets that don't change within a human's lifetime. ZARTH will reveal to you the dymanic and fast-changing universe you have never seen before!
Play for fun and help us improve our machine learning classification algorithms. Rarely, they make mistakes which the human eye can easily check upon inspection of the transient spectra.
Engage your students of any age with astronomy and STEM by bringing gamification and hands-on experience into the classroom. We will expand ZARTH with additional modules for educators soon so stay tuned!
ZARTH uses Skymap and users can easily turn on and off various layers in the sky such as planets or constellations
ZARTH has leaderboards and options to share your scores with others on social media
Once you have caught a transient you have the option to choose how much you'd like to learn about it
With features similar to a simple investment market, players will learn why some transients are more 'valuable'
