ADAM::Precovery is a tool designed by the Asteroid Institute to search for precovery observations of moving objects in archival data. This tool is a hosted version of our open source precovery library prepared with multiple large datasets and hosted on Google Cloud.

See a short video guide below!

The ADAM::Precovery database includes data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and NoirLab Source Catalog Data Release 2 (NSC DR2). ZTF runs from 2018 to present. Data is ingested from the ZTF alert stream on a monthly basis. NSC DR2 runs from 2012 to 2019. Additional datasets (including Skymapper, ATLAS, and CSS) are in the process of being added.

If available in the corresponding dataset, a cutout of the detection will be shown with the results. The crosshair at the center of the cutout indicates the expected position of the object. The detection is indicated with a green circle. Please note that if the distance between the expected location and the detection is more than several arcseconds, it may not appear on the cutout. The expected direction of movement and the length of streak is indicated with a blue arrow.

Any moving object that can be seen by a telescope may have observations found using precovery. This includes asteroids, comets, and even spacecraft. Not every object will return observations, however, as this depends on whether it was seen by the telescopes included in our datasets.