You Can Make Stellar Images Brighter . Articles | ... A few months ago I wrote an article titled "You Can’t Make Them Brighter". So why am I now writing that you can make them brighter. ... The image of a focused star is actually a small disk called the Airy disk, named after the 19 th century scientist Sir George Airy. ... For a given aperture, a smaller Airy disk means that the light is focused to a smaller disk and is therefore brighter. ... www.astronomy.net . About Astronomy Net | ...