The RAPTOR‐scan system mines data for optical transients associated with gamma‐ray bursts and is used to create a catalog for the RAPTOR telescope system. RAPTOR‐scan can detect and track individual astronomical objects across data sets containing millions of observed points.Accurately identifying a real object over many optical images (clusteringthe individual appearances) is necessary in order to analyze object light curves. To achieve this, RAPTOR telescope observations are sent in real time to a database. Each morning, a program based on the DBSCAN algorithm clusters the observations and labels each one with an object identifier. Once clustering is complete, the analysis program may be used to query the database and produce light curves, maps of the sky field, or other informative displays.Although RAPTOR‐scan was designed for the RAPTOR optical telescope system, it is a general tool designed to identify objects in a collection of astronomical data and facilitate quick data analysis. RAPTOR‐scan will be released as free software under the GNU General Public License. © 2004 American Institute of Physics