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Pronunciation varies by accent · noun
(astronomy) The use of previously gathered data (especially photographic images) to recover a recently discovered object (typically a small solar system body)..
If you look for your new object after discovery, it's called "recovery". [...] if you find your new object in some old data that someone took before you discovered your object, it's called a "precovery".
Quaoar [...] is a Trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt. It was discovered on June 4, 2002 by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown at the California Institute of Technology [...] The earliest precovery turned out to be a May 25, 1954 plate from Palomar Observatory.
Use precovery when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Precovery means (astronomy) The use of previously gathered data (especially photographic images) to recover a recently discovered object (typically a small solar system body)..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
If you look for your new object after discovery, it's called "recovery". [...] if you find your new object in some old data that someone took before you discovered your object, it's called a "precovery".
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