It was discovered in images taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and formally published by Gregory N. Mace and collaborators in March 2013.

[5]: 5 [6]: 28  Astronomers suspected the brown dwarf was a binary system upon follow-up observations showing it had an unusual infrared spectrum,[5]: 22  but its binarity was not confirmed until the James Webb Space Telescope resolved the system's components in high-resolution NIRCam imaging in September 2022, with its results published in March 2023.

[4] The two components orbit their system barycenter approximately every 7 years and are separated 0.97 astronomical units from each other, which is slightly less than the distance between the Sun and Earth.

The study of such low-mass binary systems will provide valuable insight into the formation and evolution of planetary-mass objects.

[4] The secondary component WISE J0336−0143 B (305–340 K) might be one of the coldest objects in interstellar space discovered so far (as of September 2023[update]).