It was discovered on 28 January 1930, by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at the Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany,[1] and later named after Odysseus, the legendary hero from Greek mythology.
[10][11][12] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.0753 and a diameter of 125.64 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 7.93.
[8][9] An estimated mean diameter of 130, 125 or 114 kilometers, measured by Akari, IRAS and WISE, makes Odysseus the 7th, 8th or 10th largest Jupiter Trojan, respectively.
A large number of rotational lightcurves of Odysseus have been obtained since its first photometric observation by Richard Binzel in January 1988.
In June 1994, the first accurate measurement of the asteroid's rotation period was made by Stefano Mottola using the former Bochum 0.61-metre Telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.