It was identified in the seventeenth century, and is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle (an asterism consisting of the bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair).

In 1967, the first pulsar, PSR B1919+21, was discovered in Vulpecula by Jocelyn Bell, supervised by Antony Hewish, in Cambridge.

While they were searching for scintillation of radio signals of quasars, they observed pulses which repeated with a period of 1.3373 seconds.

[6] Vulpecula is also home to HD 189733 b, one of the closest extrasolar planets studied by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

On 11 July 2007, a team led by Giovanna Tinetti published the results of their observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope concluding there is solid evidence for significant amounts of water vapor in the planet's atmosphere.

[7] Although HD 189733b with atmospheric temperatures rising above 1,000 °C is far from being habitable, this finding increases the likelihood that water, an essential component of life, would be found on a more Earth-like planet in the future.

[12] It can be seen with good binoculars in a dark sky location, appearing as a dimly glowing disk approximately 8 arcminutes in diameter.

It is also called "the Coathanger" because of its distinctive star pattern when viewed with binoculars or a low power telescope.