Taking an optical image of distant planets is tough because the bright light from their stars drowns them out. Project 1640 uses several instruments in concert to filter out enough starlight for nearby objects to become visible.

One of the issues that faces would-be astronomical photographers is the Earth’s own atmosphere, which distorts images of distant objects. To sharpen the picture, an adaptive optics system measures the incoming light and then uses a deformable mirror to try to eliminate the atmospheric distortion from the image. This creates a bright spot with rings around it.

Although the picture is clear, a longer exposure time would allow the instruments to capture more detail. But the starlight is too bright for a long exposure---unless it were blocked out somehow…