A WHOLE range of objects never seen before could soon reveal themselves to a telescope with night vision.

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which headed to the launch pad last week, will map the entire sky in infrared. It will spot everything from nearby cool, failed stars to intense, 10-billion-year-old starburst galaxies.

The telescope will also be able to distinguish objects like asteroids and comets from more distant stars. WISE is expected to find about 100,000 new asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and hundreds of asteroids that pass close to Earth. It will be especially …