Although the name originally referred to an entire constellation, it was assigned to this particular bright star at least as early as 1660, when it appeared in Andreas Cellarius's renowned Harmonia Macrocosmica, a magnificently illustrated 17th-century Dutch book about the cosmos.

[17] Consequently, Delta Velorum itself is known as 天社三 (Tiān Shè sān), "the Third Star of Celestial Earth God's Temple".

[7] In 1978 the primary component was reported to be a spectroscopic binary in the Proceedings of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, and this was confirmed by the Hipparcos satellite.

[21] In 2000 it was announced that the inner components Aa and Ab form an eclipsing binary, having an orbital period of 45.15 days and an eccentricity of 0.230.

[22] Delta Velorum is the brightest eclipsing binary, although Algol has a deeper minimum and is easier to observe visually.

Observations of variability in the Delta Velorum system were made independently by ground-based astronomers and the Galileo spaceprobe at Jupiter.

[23] HD 76653 is a probable (96% chance) co-moving companion; the two have an estimated physical separation of 2.2 ly (0.6605 pc) with similar proper motions.

Both members of the spectroscopic binary Delta Velorum A are slightly evolved stars that are still on the main sequence.

[10] Delta Velorum B is a smaller main-sequence star, with a mass of about 1.4 M☉, a temperature of 6,600 K, a radius of 1.43 R☉, and a bolometric luminosity of 3.5 L☉.