It was discovered on 7 August 1875, by the French brothers Paul Henry and Prosper Henry at the Paris, but the credit for this discovery was given to Prosper.

[3] Based upon its spectrum, it is an unusual G-type asteroid (GU) and a stony S-type asteroid in the Tholen and SMASS classification, respectively.

[4][18] Photometric observations of this asteroid at the European Southern Observatory in 1977–78 gave a light curve with a period of 0.86098 ± 0.00030 days (20.6635 ± 0.0072 h) and a brightness variation of 0.32 in magnitude.

[12] A 2007 study at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado, United States, yielded a period of 20.666 ± 0.002 hours with a magnitude variation of 0.21.

[13][b] This object is the namesake of the Gallia family (802), a small family of nearly 200 known stony asteroids that share similar spectral properties and orbital elements.