As many of you know, the Catalina Sky Survey, like most of the other NEO
surveys along with the MPC use a form of a program called "Digest".
Digest calculates the likelihood that an object is a Main Belt asteroid
from the apparent motion of an object and it's location in the sky. A
low score in digest means the object is most likely a MBA while a high
score is almost certainly not an MBA. An object that scores 100 is
usually, but not always an NEO.

Catalina's newest team member, Andrea Boattini has been reviewing our
discoveries at the Schmidt (703) on a daily basis and has the observer
at our 1.5-m (G96) make follow up observations of anything that has a
lower digest score, but in fact may be an NEO "disguised" as a less
interesting object.

On the night of the 12th (UT) Andrea sent up to me his usual request to
follow up on objects that Alex Gibbs has discovered at 703 the night
before. When this field came up for validation, the original target was
recovered along with the object that is now known as 2007 VF189. At that
time, VF189 was at 20.0V and moving along with an apparent motion of
~4.3 degrees a day, moving south and west. I scheduled the object for
additional follow up observations and submitted the object as an NEO
candidate to the MPC. Within a few minutes, it was posted automatically
to the NEOCP. Later that night I reobserved the object and submitted the
observations to the MPC so the ephemerides would be updated for anyone
making follow up observations.

On the evening of the 13th, Alex and I discussed which NEOCP objects I
would follow up using the 1.5-m and which ones he would follow up using
the Schmidt. Typically G96 makes the majority of the follow up
observations other than night of discovery, but in this instance, the
weather forecast was for deteriorating conditions later in the evening,
and by this time, 2007 VF189 was already bright enough for the Schmidt
to observe and the uncertainty was growing.

I'll probably post the discovery images later today.

From what I understand, the possibility that this object is related to
Rosetta or it's launch vehicle has been completely eliminated.
Apparently 2007 VN189 and Rosetta's LV has never been closer than ~0.5AU
at any time since it's launch and the inclination of this object and
the LV has a difference of 5 degrees.

To answer Reiner's question, the object was discovered with the Mt.
Lemmon Survey's 1.5-m telescope and the Rosetta team found out about it
after the fact. Why the information was release to Spiegel is beyond me.

While I can't speak directly to the investigation of this object and the
elimination of the possibility that is part of the Rosetta mission, I
understand that there will be more information posted to this list by at
least one of those persons who is directly involved later today.

I'd also like to thank Luckas & Holvorcem for obtaining follow up
observations of this object immediately before it's closest approach
using the Shenton Park facility of Tenagra Observatory (D21).