Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

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!

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.