Apart from resolving images adequately in relation to the enormous distances involved, the glare from a distant sun often washes out the image of anything but the largest of planetary bodies in its vicinity. To help combat this problem, researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) have developed a new type of astronomical camera that can detect the faint reflections of distant worlds near bright stars many millions of times better than that possible with an ordinary telescope.

Among the most coveted of exoplanet discoveries are those that uncover Earth-like planets that could potentially support life. Unfortunately, these types of planets are usually very much smaller and harder to detect than the giant gas exoplanets more often found, particularly when hunting for them with an optical telescope. This is because the reflected light of a planet may be millions of times fainter than that of its parent star, and direct optical observation is very rarely able to detect, let alone distinguish, distant planetary bodies.