[1][2][3][4] It was discovered in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel while she was participating as a volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project, part of the Zooniverse group of citizen science websites.

Photographically, it appears as a bright blob close to spiral galaxy IC 2497 in the constellation Leo Minor.

Radio observations indicate that this is due to an outflow of gas from IC 2497's core which is interacting with a small region of HsV to collapse and form stars.

[8] One hypothesis suggests that HsV consists of remnants of a small galaxy showing the impact of radiation from a bright quasar event that occurred in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years before how it is observed today.

[13] As a result of the interest in similar ionized clouds for the study of both the history and obscuration of Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), participants in the Galaxy Zoo (GZ) project carried out a wide search for such clouds using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

The Chandra data also show evidence for hotter gas within the bubble, which may imply that a wind of material is blowing away from the black hole.

The study found UGC 6081 as a candidate Voorwerpje, using data from the 2.5-meter telescope of the Caucasus Mountain Observatory.

[21][22] In April 2016, a study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society using data gathered by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in January 2012.

[23] The study found extended soft X-ray emission in IC 2497 which suggested the presence of a bubble or cavity surrounding the AGN.