Astronomy and Computing is more relevant recently. In Oct’s issue (vol. 53):
N. Golovich, T. Steil, A. Geringer-Sameth et al. Survey-wide asteroid discovery with a high-performance computing enabled non-linear digital tracking framework Art 100987 .2025.100987
Synthetic tracking (or track-before-detect, or digital tracking) is pretty straightforward, if not pretty cheap: string consecutive images together, and follow moving objects digitally instead of telescopically. Computers do the workload, not slew motors (when you aren’t even sure of the target’s motion vector). But this method strongly implies consecutive images, not random shots in time. Golovich et al. extend the computer workload to allow arbitrary (sometimes long) intervals between shots. This is possible because asteroids follow Kepler’s Laws, with determinate orbits. With long image arcs, this tracking becomes applicable to the Rubin Observatory. The Rubin telescope will reshoot two consecutive images, then revisit sky locations every 2-4 days, depending, and then again on longer timescales. Conventional synthetic tracking was never meant to handle this timescale.