Brightness and color of rapidly moving objects: The visual appearance of a large sphere revisited
Abstract
An object at relativistic speed is seen as both rotated and distorted when it is large or close by so that it subtends a large solid angle. This is a consequence of the aberration effect and is obtained by purely geometric considerations. In this paper it is pointed out and illustrated that a photorealistic image of such an object would actually be dominated by the Doppler and searchlight effects, which would be so prominent as to render the geometric apparent shape effectively invisible.
- Publication:
-
American Journal of Physics
- Pub Date:
- January 2000
- DOI:
- 10.1119/1.19373
- Bibcode:
- 2000AmJPh..68...56K
- Keywords:
-
- 01.50.-i;
- 42.66.Ne;
- 42.66.Qg;
- 03.30.+p;
- Educational aids;
- Color vision: color detection adaptation and discrimination;
- Scales for light and color detection;
- Special relativity