A team of astrophysicists from Northwestern University has developed a new method to cut through the bright glare of starlight that blocks some distant planets from the view of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The method combines physics-based modeling and techniques used in machine learning. It corrects for minuscule imperfections in the telescope that make it difficult to find faint objects in space, Northwestern said.

The team of Northwestern researchers applied their method to existing images from the James Webb Space Telescope and improved its sensitivity by as much as 15 times, Northwestern said. The result was the sight of a giant exoplanet that could not be seen without the method being used.