DISCORD

Our algorithms catch the obvious events, but the tricky ones need a human eye. Your calls settle the debate.

Field guide

How to read a light curve

Time (x) Each dot is a single night's observation, moving left to right.
Brightness (y) Up means brighter. You're looking for a temporary spike in starlight, which looks like a single hill or hump.
Baseline The star's normal, everyday brightness before anything interesting happens.

Astronomers use magnitudes to measure brightness, where a smaller number actually means a brighter star. To save you a headache, we flipped the chart so up always means brighter.

The three shapes

Microlensing

A smooth, single hump. The star gets steadily brighter, peaks, and fades right back to normal. This is exactly what we're hunting for! Most events last 10 to 40 days.

Variable star

A repeating rollercoaster. The star pulses or eclipses regularly, making a continuous wave pattern rather than one isolated peak.

Noise

Messy, random scatter with no clear shape. Mark it as noise and move on.

Practice

Classify these practice curves the same way you'll classify real ones, by walking the question tree below. Get four right to unlock the real data queue. If you miss one, the explanations will help you learn the ropes. No sign-in needed until you pass.

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DISCORD

Practice

What should we call you?

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Live results

Anomaly review disagreement = discovery signal

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