It was discovered by Johann Palisa on January 28, 1875, and named after the city of Pola (now Pula, Croatia), home of the Austrian Naval Observatory where he made the discovery.

In the Tholen classification scheme, Polana is a primitive carbonaceous asteroid of type F, which is a subdivision of more common C-type.

[1] Under the SMASS classification taxonomy, Polana is listed as a B-type asteroid, a group that combines both the Tholen B and F types.

The spectrum of this object suggests the presence of magnetite (Fe3O4), which gives it the spectrally blue coloration that is a characteristic of this SMASS class.

There are up to 1,500 asteroids in this resonance, and the resonance between Polana and Mars will strengthen over the next million years due to Polana transitioning into a strong libration period with Mars.