Research Interests
I work in planetary defence and exoplanet science, using open, dense and sparse time-series photometry. I measure the rotation periods, shapes, satellites, and taxonomies of near-Earth, potentially hazardous, and binary asteroids. I build algorithms to scale that analysis to large surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST). Alongside this, I study exoplanets through transit-timing variations (TTV): I observe transits with my own telescope to refine their ephemerides, and I develop N-body simulation methods to detect unseen, non-transiting planets.
Methods: CCD image calibration and reduction; aperture and differential photometry; Lomb-Scargle, Fourier, and phase dispersion minimisation (PDM) period-finding; light-curve and N-body modelling; MCMC and BIC model selection; Python (NumPy, SciPy, Astropy).
Software: PhAst - an open-source pipeline I built to accelerate asteroid characterisation by fusing sparse survey photometry (Gaia, ZTF) with dense observations. Read about PhAst.
Hi! Bonjour
I am Arushi Nath, a high-school student in Toronto. At four years old, I drew Saturn with my best handwriting. At fifteen, I built the observatory to study it for real. Toronto's bright skies and the constant scramble for telescope time kept getting between me and the questions I wanted to answer, so I made a choice: rather than shrink my questions to fit whatever telescope I could borrow, I would build the instrument. My research observatory now runs remotely from a dark-sky site in Nerpio, Spain - a telescope, mount, and camera I researched, funded, configured, and calibrated myself (IAU Minor Planet Center code R60).
I use it to do open science on the things that keep me curious: near-Earth asteroids that could one day threaten us, and planets around other stars. Across everything I do, the method is the same - open data, my own Python code, and results that anyone can check and reuse.
Currently, I am working on:
Strengthening Planetary Defence: I study asteroids that pass near Earth by finding how fast they rotate, whether they have small companion moons, and what they are made of. This information is useful if we ever need to safely change the path of an asteroid that could threaten Earth.
Searching Multi-planetary Exoplanet Systems: I simulate hundreds of thousands of multi-planet systems to study how planets tug on each other through gravity. By measuring tiny changes in the timing of when a planet passes in front of its star (transit-timing variations), I can identify candidate unseen planets and constrain their orbital and physical parameters.
Along the way, my peer-reviewed work has been anchored by a sole-authored paper in the aerospace journal Acta Astronautica, with further sole-authored work in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Minor Planet Bulletin, and co-authorships in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series and The Planetary Science Journal (the latter as part of the international science team for NASA's DART Mission). My work has been recognised with the Third Grand Award at Regeneron ISEF, Second Prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists, and the Masason Scholarship for planetary-defence research. Away from the telescope, I listen to a lot of pop music and rock climb.
I am Arushi Nath, a high-school student in Toronto. At four years old, I drew Saturn with my best handwriting. At fifteen, I built the observatory to study it for real. Toronto's bright skies and the constant scramble for telescope time kept getting between me and the questions I wanted to answer, so I made a choice: rather than shrink my questions to fit whatever telescope I could borrow, I would build the instrument. My research observatory now runs remotely from a dark-sky site in Nerpio, Spain - a telescope, mount, and camera I researched, funded, configured, and calibrated myself (IAU Minor Planet Center code R60).
I use it to do open science on the things that keep me curious: near-Earth asteroids that could one day threaten us, and planets around other stars. Across everything I do, the method is the same - open data, my own Python code, and results that anyone can check and reuse.
Currently, I am working on:
Strengthening Planetary Defence: I study asteroids that pass near Earth by finding how fast they rotate, whether they have small companion moons, and what they are made of. This information is useful if we ever need to safely change the path of an asteroid that could threaten Earth.
Searching Multi-planetary Exoplanet Systems: I simulate hundreds of thousands of multi-planet systems to study how planets tug on each other through gravity. By measuring tiny changes in the timing of when a planet passes in front of its star (transit-timing variations), I can identify candidate unseen planets and constrain their orbital and physical parameters.
Along the way, my peer-reviewed work has been anchored by a sole-authored paper in the aerospace journal Acta Astronautica, with further sole-authored work in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Minor Planet Bulletin, and co-authorships in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series and The Planetary Science Journal (the latter as part of the international science team for NASA's DART Mission). My work has been recognised with the Third Grand Award at Regeneron ISEF, Second Prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists, and the Masason Scholarship for planetary-defence research. Away from the telescope, I listen to a lot of pop music and rock climb.
Collaborations and Networks
I work with international teams and open-science networks: the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN); the ExoClock Project (co-author on its catalogue of 620 exoplanet ephemerides); the NASA DART / Didymos observation team (co-author in The Planetary Science Journal); the Rubin / LSST Solar System community; and the Kepler transit-timing community.
Hands-on at the telescope - the observing side of my asteroid and exoplanet research.
I am drawn to these problems because the open data on these issues is both big and small at the same time. I have to sift through massive datasets produced by space and ground-based telescopes to find the measurements that matter. And those measurements are often sparse, incomplete, noisy, and may not be repeatable in decades. Whether it is an asteroid observed only a few nights every few years, or an exoplanet system with just a single observed transit, the challenge for me is the same. How far can I push open science, open data, open algorithms, open communities, and ingenuity to extract new knowledge?
Then there is the thrill of discovering the unknown, and the unknown unknowns. For example, how would the mutual orbital period of a binary asteroid change after a kinetic impactor mission? Could it trigger slow structural changes that also changes their rotation period? Or can highly elliptical planetary systems exist as stable multi-planet systems?
Outside of astronomy, I enjoy applying the same open-science approach to solving problems closer to home, where impact is more immediately measurable. Through hackathons and civic-tech projects, I analyze open municipal data to build tools that help identify city issues and make them easier to report and fix. This work allows young people who are unable to vote to feel empowered to make a difference.
Over the past ten years, I have built featherweight and 30lbs battlebots, rockets, drones, submarines, and rovers. I have participated in 50+ hackathons as I enjoy learning fast and collaborating with diverse teams. I feel honored to have won many national and international awards. Though they are not the driving force, I felt good becoming a Global Winner of the NASA Space Apps Challenge COVID-19 Challenge among more than 2,000 teams from 150 countries.
Why? Because that project merged my interests in space and pop music! And I got invited by NASA to witness a rocket launch at the Kennedy Space Center.
Interested in learning more about my work?
- Astronomy research: www.MonitorMyPlanet.com
- The Moon and Artemis: www.MonitorMyMoon.com
- Robots, AI, and Rovers: www.HotPopRobot.com
- Technology to build better cities: www.bettermycity.com
Contact me via the form or at arushi@monitormyplanet.com
Code & data: github.com/Spacegirl123
ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0007-5329-9148