The other (top right) is a brown dwarf -- a celestial body bigger than the biggest gas giants but smaller than the smallest stars -- that's 23 times as far from its host star than the Earth is from the sun. Keck's instrument was able to spot the brown dwarf despite its star's brilliance, because coronagraphs are designed to filter out starlight. This particular one is special, though: it doesn't block starlight with "masks" like other coronagraphs do. Instead, it redirects light by combining and cancelling out light waves.

Now that JPL scientists have proven that the instrument works, they plan to continue using it to observe young stars that could have exoplanets in the future. Dmitri Mawet, the JPL scientist who led the study about the brown dwarf image, explains: