The brown dwarfs were discovered by Kevin Luhman, astronomer from Pennsylvania State University and a researcher at Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, from images made by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Earth-orbiting satellite—NASA infrared-wavelength 40 cms space telescope, a mission that lasted from December 2009 to February 2011; the discovery images were taken from January 2010 to January 2011, and the discovery was announced in 2013 (the pair are the only two objects announced in the discovery paper).