It was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory on 17 April 1888.

[3] Adelheid is a member of the Alauda family (902),[5] a large family of typically bright carbonaceous asteroids and named after its parent body, 702 Alauda.

[25]: 23 Photometric observations in 1992 gave a lightcurve with a period of 6.328 ± 0.012 hours and a brightness variation of 0.10 ± 0.02 in magnitude.

[4][23] Any reference of Adelheid's name to a person or occurrence is unknown.

All of these low-numbered asteroids have numbers between 164 Eva and 1514 Ricouxa and were discovered between 1876 and the 1930s, predominantly by astronomers Auguste Charlois, Johann Palisa, Max Wolf and Karl Reinmuth.