Finding life beyond our solar system is a major goal of modern astronomy. NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to take direct images of Earth-sized planets around stars other than our sun. This task, however, is extraordinarily difficult, given that these planets are roughly 10 billion times fainter than their host stars. To detect them, scientists must find ways to suppress nearly all of the nearby starlight, which would otherwise overwhelm the faint planetary signal.