Point Source Catalog Search for Moving Objects

Precovery provides tooling to search through point source catalogs for historical observations of moving objects. The system enables arc extension of discovery candidates and orbit refinement for confirmed objects by recovering previously unidentified observations from survey data.

The implementation is sensitive to singleton observations and does not rely on tracklets, allowing recovery of isolated data points that traditional tracklet-based methods cannot utilize.

Key capabilities:

• Database indexing: Transform source-extracted catalogs into databases optimized for fast positional queries
• Orbital state vector search: Find precovery observations for arbitrary orbital trajectories
• Singleton observation recovery: Process isolated observations without requiring tracklets
• Arc extension: Extend observation arcs for newly discovered objects
• Historical data mining: Search archival survey data for previously unidentified observations

Precovery In Use

The precovery system has recovered thousands of historical observations, extending observation arcs by years or decades. For asteroid 2024 YR4, Precovery found and submitted several previously unlinked observations in archival ATLAS data, strengthening the observational arc used for subsequent orbit analysis.

The precovery algorithm is implemented in ADAM’s precovery service and available through APIs.