Photon filter

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MSLDSci
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Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:30 am
Occupation: Student 4. semester B. Sc.
Project Question: Different questions in materials science, physics, astronomy, geology, biology, informatics
to answere whether creative thoughts of mine are theoretically possible.
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Project Status: Not applicable

Photon filter

Post by MSLDSci »

Can you distuingish (infrared-)light from an exoplanet and its star behind it by the different angels of entry of the light? (Distance 5-15 lightyears from here)

Could a layer of aligned, refractive crystals filter light, not inciding perpendicular to the crystal lattice, from light, inciding perpenticular to the crystal lattice, on this small difference of angel?

i hope you can understand my questions, english is not so good.

thx!
raytrent
Former Expert
Posts: 214
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:07 pm

Re: Photon filter

Post by raytrent »

That depends on the angle difference. My guess is probably not. Most detections of exoplanets are done by measuring wobble of the base star, or decrease in stellar intensity due to occlusion. If it were possible to measure the angular displacement of light reflecting from a planet, it would probably have already been done.

However, science is all about doing what people haven't thought of yet, so it's an interesting idea.

One way to investigate this idea would be to calculate what the angular displacement would be, and compare that to the diffraction available through the use of various crystals. I would expect that the former would be far smaller than the latter, but that's just a guess.
../ray\..
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