It was discovered on 9 September 1934, by Dutch astronomer Hendrik van Gent at the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa.

[1] In March 2004, a rotational lightcurve of Zeelandia was obtained from photometric observations by a collaboration of American astronomers.

Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 15.602 hours with a brightness variation of 0.61 magnitude (U=3).

[10] The result was confirmed by photometrists Pierre Antonini, Federico Manzini, Julian Oey and Frederick Pilcher, as well as Hiromi and Hiroko Hamanowa, who measured a similar period of 15.624 with an amplitude of 0.50 magnitude in April 2005 (U=3).

[5][6][7][8][9] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.2183 and a diameter of 20.99 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.66.