Relativistic aberration for accelerating observers
- Author(s)
- Robert Beig, Johannes Markus Heinzle
- Abstract
We investigate the effects of the aberration of light for a uniformly accelerating observer. The observer is initially at rest with respect to a luminous spherical object and then starts to move away with constant acceleration. Our main results are the following: (i) The observer sees an initial increase of the apparent size of the object, (ii) the apparent size of the object approaches a nonzero value as the proper time of the observer goes to infinity, and (iii) there exists a critical value of the acceleration such that the apparent size of the object is monotonically increasing when the acceleration is supercritical. Although the first effect is purely nonrelativistic, the others are the result of the relativistic aberration of light and are intimately connected with the Lorentzian geometry of Minkowksi spacetime. The examples we present illustrate that the three effects are more or less negligible in everyday life, but significant in the context of space flight.
- Organisation(s)
- Gravitational Physics
- Journal
- American Journal of Physics
- Volume
- 76
- Pages
- 663-670
- No. of pages
- 8
- ISSN
- 0002-9505
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2888542
- Publication date
- 2008
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103036 Theoretical physics
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/relativistic-aberration-for-accelerating-observers(5dded8b2-2c38-4b17-b652-35df368816f3).html