Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

Author(s): DaveBowman2001

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The WISE observatory, also known as Explorer 92, is a NASA infrared telescope which performed an all-sky infrared survey from 2009-2011 which afterwards put into hibernation mode. Upon reactivating in 2013, it is repurposed to search for asteroids that could collide with Earth, thus renaming into NEOWISE. Aside from discovering the first known Y-type brown dwarfs and thousands of asteroids, it also discovered many comets, one of which became the Great Comet of 2020, which also bears the same name.

The WISE observatory's first light image, in the direction of the constellation Carina, 2010-Jan-6

Discovery image of the object (red) that became known as C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), a.k.a. the Great Comet of 2020

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