It's mostly public. The data used for this discovery was taken from UKIDSS, an IR sky survey (you can get data here: http://surveys.roe.ac.uk:8080/wsa/SQL_form

It's mostly public. The data used for this discovery was taken from UKIDSS, an IR sky survey (you can get data here: http://surveys.roe.ac.uk:8080/wsa/SQL_form.jsp http://surveys.roe.ac.uk:8080/wsa/SQL_form.jsp) and SDSS, an optical survey (you can get data here: http://www.sdss3.org/dr8/data_access.php http://www.sdss3.org/dr8/data_access.php). All SDSS data is available to the public. UKIDSS data can only be accessed by ESO member countries for the first year, but after that becomes public. (I worked on a similar project to discover a high-z quasar as a summer research project in college, though unfortunately with less success.)