Mr Brown this week received a doctorate fellowship to study at New York's Columbia University.
‘‘I am so excited to begin my research at a place I have dreamed about and worked towards for many years,'' he said.
The 23-year-old's fees and research costs will be paid while he completes a PhD fellowship at the university's astrophysics department.
He is believed to be the first student from New Zealand to receive the award.
While completing his doctorate, ‘‘which could take up to seven or eight years'', he will research the detection of planets which orbit stars in remote galaxies, and the development of instrumentation to observe these objects.
He described recent research experience at the American Museum of Natural History's department of astrophysics under assistant curator Ben Oppenheimer as ‘‘very valuable''.
‘‘Unlike previous methods, the technology might be developed to tell us more about the planet's atmospheric characteristics and what's happening on the planet's surface,'' Mr Brown said.
Coronagraphs were first used to block out light to observe a solar eclipse. They were subsequently developed to block out the ‘‘halo-glare'' from stars.
The technique allowed scientists to view planets previously obscured by starlight, he said.
‘‘It's a completely new process. The analogy is it's like looking at a lighthouse across a vast ocean. The light is hard enough to see, but the research will look at finding ways to blocking it out to see moths around the lens,'' he said.
He hoped to observe planets which are about 50 times larger than Jupiter. Researchers are most interested in ‘‘close stars'', about 80 light years away.
Mr Brown, who enrolled in undergraduate astrophysics and molecular biology studies at the University of Canterbury in 2003, was one of five international students to receive a Columbia fellowship this year.
