OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey
1990s astronomical survey
The OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey (ODAS) was an astronomical survey to search for small Solar System bodies focusing on near-Earth objects in the late 1990s. This European scientific project was a collaboration between the French Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The survey is credited for the discovery of one comet and more than 1000 minor planets during 1996–1999.
Description
ODAS operated in cooperation with a global effort regarding near-Earth objects that was begun by the "Working Group on Near-Earth Objects", a component of the International Astronomical Union. The project began October 1996 and ceased observations in April 1999 for a refurbishing. However the telescope has not been reopened since that time. Survey observations were made during the 15 days each month when moon light was at a minimum, during the first and last quarters of the lunar month. The operation used a 90 cm Schmidt telescope of the OCA at Calern, near the city of Nice in southeastern France. A combination of a CCD camera and a software package were used for automated detection of moving objects.
Throughout its tenure, the project observed a total of 10,523 objects, made a total of 44,433 positional measurements, and was responsible for the discovery of more than a thousand asteroids according to the new rules issued by the MPC in October 2010.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1759008. Authority coordinates are 43.749, 6.927. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1000, 1996, 1999 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.