Infrared background
The infrared background is an extragalactic background radiation - i.e. isotropic , non-punctiform radiation - in the far infrared . It was discovered in 1996 in the data from the DIRBE experiment on the COBE satellite .
The infrared background is probably created by the superposition of the emission of many distant infrared galaxies . In fact, the Infrared Space Observatory was able to resolve about 10% of this background into individual galaxies . With the PACS instrument on board the Herschel Space Observatory , this should be possible for over half of the background. With 30 hours of observation in October 2009, PACS was able to resolve around 60 percent of the cosmic infrared background into individual sources in a small section of the sky.