A search for peculiar objects with the NASA Orbital Debris Observatory 3 meter liquid mirror telescope

The NASA Orbital Debris Observatory (NODO) astronomical survey uses a trans it 3 m liquid mirror telescope to observe a strip of sky in 20 narrowband f ilters. In this article, we analyze a subset of data from the 1996 observin g season. The catalog consists of 18,000 objects with 10 < V < 19 observed in 10 narrowband filters ranging from 500 to 950 nm. We first demonstrate t he reliability of the data by fitting the Bahcall-Soneira model of the Gala xy to the NODO magnitude counts and color counts at various Galactic latitu des. We then perform a hierarchical clustering analysis on the sample to ex tract 206 objects, out of a total of 18,000, showing peculiar spectral ener gy distributions. It is a measure of the reliability of the instrument that we extract so few peculiar objects. Although the data and results, per se, may not seem otherwise particularly remarkable, this work constitutes a mi lestone in optical astronomy, since this is the first article that demonstr ates astronomical research with a radically new type of mirror.