Abstract
THE phenomenon of aberration is usually explained in text-books by considering the motion of the earth past a train of light waves. The special theory of relativity, however, tells us that only relative motions are apparent, and so aberration should occur when a light source is moving relative to an observer. In particular, stars having a component velocity perpendicular to the line of sight should produce an aberration effect. In most stars, this would not be observed, since it would be constant ; but binary systems, in which one component has large velocities in its orbit, should show aberration effects. The angle of aberration is dependent only on the relative velocities, not on the distance, and has the direction of the velocity. Thus I would expects numerous observations of stars rotating about one another with large (apparent) angular separation but short period (that of average spectroscopics).
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HINES, C. Planetary Aberration. Nature 163, 249 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163249a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163249a0
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