More to the point, planets are next to stars. So it's more like detecting a single grain of sand on Mars that happens to be sitting next to a high-beam headlight - even if you had a telescope powerful enough to resolve it, it's tough to separate it from its host star.
I wasn’t suggesting you can observe them with your naked eye and, in fact, one of the definitions of ‘see’ describes deducing from information. So sarcasm quotes are not necessary.
