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Old 13-11-2009, 01:06 AM
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ngcles
The Observologist

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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Billimari, NSW Central West
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In short ... no.

Hi Trevor,

The short answer is no because except in the very largest telescopes in the world, no star exhibits a visible/observable disc that is an actual image of its surface.

The disc/diffraction pattern we see when we look through an amateur-sized telescope (and indeed the vast majority of professional-class and size instruments) is an "Airy disc".

You can read about what that is and why it looks that way here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disc

You may however be able to detect a drop in brightness of the star due to esentially, a shallow annular eclipse, as the exoplanet transit takes place. Such a drop in magnitude would be very slight (really tiny actually) and have to be detected photometrically. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember somewhere that some amateurs have in fact detected exo-planet transits in this way with large telescopes and CCD.

Having now read your link, that is exactly what happened -- and that is astonishing for a person who has been in amateur astronomy for almost 40 years. 30 years ago this would have been not merely beyond contemplation but completely "over the horizon" -- not even thought of as a fanciful possibility for an amateur to achieve.

A big thunbs-up and good on ya to them!!


Best,

Les D
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