It looks like NASA is up to its old antics again, this time promising the ability to detect planets from faraway stars. These extrasolar distant planets, sometimes known as exoplanets, have typically been identified erroneously by madmen scientists until 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz realized accurate planet designation was popular.

While identifying extrasolar planets may seem like an easy job, National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists would say otherwise:

Trying to image an exoplanet - a planet orbiting a star other than the sun - is a daunting task, because its relatively dim glow is easily overpowered by the intense glare of its much bigger, brighter parent star. The challenge has been compared to looking for a firefly next to a searchlight.

This is true, since Firefly is really hard to find today (did this show get canceled or something? It was so good).

Using an instrument called a coronagraph to mask the central star’s glare and a mirror to gather light for the telescope, scientists could “image a distant planet 10 billion times fainter than its central star.” The device, named the High Contrast Imaging Testbed, uses mathematical angle reflection magic to block out the bright shine of the main star that the planets in question orbit.

The picture above is an image from one of NASA’s simulated demonstrations, and showcases just what makes this technology so special. The main concept is as follows:

Three simulated planets — one as bright as Jupiter, one half as bright as Jupiter and one as faint as Earth — stand out plainly in this image created from a sequence of 480 images captured by the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL. A roll-subtraction technique, borrowed from space astronomy, was used to distinguish planets from background light. The asterisk marks the location of the system’s simulated star.

The actual potential of this telescope is very high, since most exoplanets that have already been found either feature extreme temperatures or are giant gas balls that are uninhabitable. With every improvement in distant imaging technology, humans get one step closer to discovering stable, Earth-like planets, which ultimately leads to the discovery of alien lifeforms.