Systems (100) and methods (600) for acquiring data relating to an environment of interest. The methods comprise: receiving by a telescope (110) light scattered by an object within the environment; focusing a cone of light towards a spatial light modulator (112) which is placed a certain distance from the telescope on a telescope-focus surface; and deflecting a select amount of the cone of light by the spatial light modulator towards a photodiode array (114), whereby a sensitivity across the photodiode array is made uniform.