They announced the discovery and then retracted it when it was realized it was incoming.

"Hercolubus Locating the IRAS satellite.

The January 25, 1983 was launched into space by the IRAS satellite (Infrared Astronomical Satellite), a joint project of space agencies of the United States, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Its main objective was to conduct a full scan of the sky at infrared wavelengths, a type of light that we can see with our eyes but that gives us information about the temperature of an object.

To achieve the goal took ten months and finally disintegrated on reentry into Earth's atmosphere on 21 November of that same year. During his tour, in a polar orbit 560 miles from Earth, the IRAS satellite tracked four times, almost 100% of the sky, using wavelengths of 12, 25, 60 and 100 microns, with resolutions of between 0, 5 and 2 minutes of arc.

Infrared astronomy is the detection and study of the infrared radiation (heat) emitted by all objects in the universe. Every body has a temperature above absolute zero radiates in the infrared waves.

Infrared astronomy is an excellent method for the study of the universe in a wavelength range of 1-300 micrometers (a micrometer or micron is one millionth of a meter). The human eye detects only 1% of the light waves of 0.69 microns and 0.01% of 0.75 micron waves, can not see wavelengths greater than 0.75 microns, except that the light source extremely bright.

The result of all this, were located more than half a million infrared radiation sources, and among them certainly highlights that jumped to numerous media outlets around the world on December 30 de1.983.

Washington Post, 30/Diciembre/1983:

"Mysterious discovered celestial body"

"Found a celestial body of the solar system, as large as Jupiter and in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope."

Thus, the prestigious American Journal echoed the most important discovery of IRAS.

Many other media also got the news so puzzling discovery with others no less suggestive headlines:

"Mystery Body Found in Space"

"The Object Mystery Giant Wrap in Stargazers"

"On the Edge of Solar System, the Giant Object is a Mystery"

"When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body, which may be calculated as close as 50 billion miles and moving towards the earth"

The mystery body was seen twice by the infrared satellite as he scanned the sky. In the second of the time, six months after the first, the mysterious object had not moved starting point location, set on the western edge of the constellation Orion, which was immediately dismissed the possibility that outside a comet, and even more so by the enormous size that seemed to reflect, slightly higher than Jupiter. The estimated distance was calculated around fifty billion miles (more than eighty thousand four hundred sixty-seven million kilometers), about 537.89 AU (astronomical unit, equal to the average distance from the Sun to Earth, 149 597 870 Kilometers). "This suggests it's not a comet because a comet would not be as great as what we've observed and a comet would probably have moved," said Dr. James Houck of Cornell University, Center for Radio Physics and Space Research , and a member of the IRAS science team, adding later: "If you really are so close, it would be a part of our solar system."

[link to hercolubus.hostoi.com]