Space is really big, even just in our own solar system. So how can astronomers be sure they’re looking in the right place at the right time to catch an asteroid, even when they don’t know it will be there? Is it just luck? Or is there some kind of educated guesswork going on?
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Astronomers do not know in which direction to look in order to find asteroids. So they are looking in evey direction and just hope there is an undiscovered asteroid there. Most of the asteroids are in the asteroid belt so it is possible to limit the search area to the nearest part of this belt for a greater chance of discovering asteroids. However some of the most interesting asteroids to study is not in the asteroid belt so it can often be more valuable to look elsewhere. And of course you often run into problems such as terrain blocking parts of the sky or that the moon, planet or bright star is in the way which further limits the areas of the sky that can be searched at any given time. But best options for finding asteroids is still to just point the telescope in a random direction and hope.
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