The image was discovered by the Wide-Field Infared Survey Explorer (WISE), which scans the night sky for lights in the infraredrange to discover more about different aspects of astronomical objects.
It was equipped with a 3.5m mirror - the largest monolithic mirror ever flown - and three state-of-the-art instruments sensitive to long wavelengths of light, in the far-infrared and sub-millimetre range (55 to 672 microns).