that "glare" is the diffraction of the light, which spreads over the area, obscuring the planet's reflected, weak light.<br /><br />A bigger scope reduces this diffraction, narrowing the "noise" and should uncover the planet as a seperate resolvable object.<br /><br />Now, you run into another problem, that of saturation. If you have a scope big enough to do that, the target star will easily saturate any CCD detector, causing the area to "bleed" and spread as the released electrons overflow their region of the chip, once again obscuring the planet.<br /><br />So you'd need a large, low surface area scope, I.e. interferometry, to pull it off.<br /><br />How big, I'm not sure, I put it in the 100m range. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#c0c0c0"><br /></font></p><p align="center"><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">----</font></em></font><font color="#666699">SaiphMOD@gmail.com </font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">-------------------</font></em></font></p><p><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- </font></em></font><font size="1" color="#999999">The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>