It was announced by the Minor Planet Center on 2 June 2011, after other telescopes confirmed the object with additional observations.

[5]: 2 In 2016, a team of astronomers led by Ying-Tung Chen performed a search for outer Solar System objects in observations by the Pan-STARRS 1 survey.

[7][8][5]: 1  They rediscovered Taowu in Pan-STARRS observations from 2013–2016 and recognized it had an unusual retrograde polar orbit.

The nickname comes from the Chinese adjective meaning "rebellious", in reference to the object's unusual retrograde orbit.

Other simulations with a few Earth-mass dwarf planet on a high-inclination orbit also failed to reproduce the alignment.

[5] The diameter of Taowu has not been measured, but it can be estimated from its brightness (absolute magnitude) using a range of plausible values for its surface reflectivity (geometric albedo).