Vortex coronagraph

[1] Up until the year 2010, telescopes could only directly image exoplanets under exceptional circumstances.

Specifically, it is easier to obtain images when the planet is especially large (considerably larger than Jupiter), widely separated from its parent star, and hot so that it emits intense infrared radiation.

However, in 2010 a team from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory demonstrated that a vortex coronagraph could enable small telescopes to directly image planets.

[3] The VC was installed on an infrared camera at Keck, and allowed bodies to be viewed 2–3 times closer to a parent star than before.

[3] HIP 79124 B was imaged at a distance of 23 astronomical units from its host star with a vortex coronograph on the Keck telescope, and it was called a brown dwarf.