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Old 10-28-2017, 05:55 AM   #3071
Fuzz
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The video gives the impression that it has been tracked for a long time, but what they do is they take a few observations to figure out it's seed, and change in positioning, then extrapolate backwards the track of the object using astro-physics models. So if you were to see the data points, they probably only have a few from when the object is nearby, the rest of the track is inferred by it's current position and previous locations. It is also why they aren't 100% sure it is from outside the solar system. They need more data points to establish it's past position better. It is quite small, so I don't think they would have spotted it very far away.

I'm not saying their is nothing we could have spotted it with, I'm saying I have no reason to doubt we didn't, because of it's size, velocity, and the capabilities of our scopes.
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