“Even the world's most powerful telescopes have their blind spots. Although NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can peer billions of years into the past, it still struggles to photograph planets orbiting nearby stars. Stars shine with such extraordinary brightness that their glare overwhelms nearby planets' faint glow.

Now, a Northwestern University–led team of astrophysicists has developed a new computational technique that cuts through the glare—revealing planets previously hidden from view.

By combining physics-based modeling with machine-learning techniques, the new method accounts for tiny imperfections in the telescope that interfere with its ability to detect faint objects. When the team applied its method to existing JWST observations, it improved the telescope's sensitivity by up to 15 times. After the new method erased glare, it revealed a giant exoplanet in an image where conventional processing simply could not see it.

The advance could enable astronomers to discover smaller, colder and fainter planets without changing the telescopes themselves.”

From Phys.org.