Hi Seiichi,

> Maybe the precovery observations in 1996 and 1998 you found
> have not been reported to the IAU/CBAT yet?

They were reported right away. Brian Marsden and I exchanged a
number of e-mails on the linkage, and ultimately came to the
conclusion that the residuals were too high to link BOTH the
1996 obs and 1998 obs. The 1996 obs are definitely real, but
the 1998 obs were right at the noise limit, so could easily
have been false (or another object). Of course, with only the
single night from 1996, the linkage (while certainly real)
could not be proven. We really needed a second night.

I may revisit the 1998 data to see if anything can be done
to pull the comet out of the noise, but I suspect it was
just too dim.

--Rob


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