It was discovered by German astronomer R. Luther on March 1, 1854, and named after Bellōna, the Roman goddess of war; the name was chosen to mark the beginning of the Crimean War.

Its historical symbol was Bellona's whip and spear; it is in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1CECE 𜻎 ().

[8][9] Bellona is a stony (S-type) asteroid with a cross-section size of around 100–120 km.

28 Bellona is orbiting the Sun with a period of 4.63 years.

[10] Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2007 gave a light curve with a period of 15.707 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.27 ± 0.03 in magnitude.