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
