Observatory

"Think of it as an analogy to the telescopes of old... a device capable of seeing many things... at great distances."

- Darth Tyranus on the Observatory

An Observatory (also known as a Quantum Spyglass) was a powerful device that employed quantum mechanical pairing as a way to track down living being. The observatory would require a piece of a being's unique genetic information. Using quantum mechanical pairing, the observatory was able to locate identical pieces of genetic information anywhere in it's range, and thus determine the exact location of the being the genetic information belonged to. This technique could be used to track down living beings over immense distances using their genetic information alone, without having to track ships or droids (which would be abandoned by the being in question) or having to use tracking implants (which could be discovered and removed by the being in question).

Observatories were very difficult to create, as they required some of the most advanced quantum computing technology. However, once made they were incredibly powerful, and some had ranges of thousands of light years.

Mechanism
All that was required to track down a being using an observatory was a piece of that being's genetic information (such as DNA in humans and near humans). This genetic information would form a layout of particles (chemical structure) unique to that being. The machine would then excite the chemical structure in order to induce quantum mechanical pairing with other identical structures within the observatory's range (which would range from thousands of kilometers to thousands of light years).

This process would be repeated incredibly quickly, trillions of times over, allowing the observatory's computer to create a map of all copies of the genetic information in range. The observatory could determine the location of the being based on the location of the highest number of copies of the genetic information (most beings contained at least 1 trillion copies).

The observatory could also determine where the being had traveled before, due to making quantum connections with small amounts of genetic information left behind (from cells that the being had naturally shed in various locations).

Due to it functioning on the quantum level, it was almost impossible to hide from an observatory. No amount of deflector shielding or physical barrier (such as from hiding inside a planet, asteroid or starship) could hide a victim from the tracking device. The only way to prevent discovery by an observatory was to escape it's range or to employ a quantum silencer.