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The aberration of light (also referred to as astronomical aberration or stellar aberration) is an astronomical phenomenon which produces an apparent motion of celestial objects about their locations dependent on the velocity of the observer. Aberration causes objects to appear to be angled or tilted towards the direction of motion of the observer compared to when the observer is stationary. The change in angle is typically very small, on the order of ''v/c'' where ''c'' is the speed of light and ''v'' the velocity of the observer. In the case of "stellar" or "annual" aberration, the apparent position of a star to an observer on Earth varies periodically over the course of a year as the Earth's velocity changes as it revolves around the Sun, by a maximum angle of approximately 20 arcseconds in right ascension or declination. Aberration is historically significant because of its role in the development of the theories of light, electromagnetism and, ultimately, the theory of special relativity. It was first observed in the late 1600s by astronomers searching for stellar parallax in order to confirm the heliocentric model of the Solar System, much to their surprise. In 1729, James Bradley provided a classical explanation for it in terms of the finite speed of light relative to the motion of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun,〔 〕〔 〕 which he used to make one of the earliest measurements of the speed of light. However, Bradley's theory was incompatible with 19th century theories of light, and aberration became a major motivation for the aether drag theories of Augustin Fresnel (in 1818) and G. G. Stokes (in 1845), and for Hendrick Lorentz' aether theory of electromagnetism in 1892. The aberration of light, together with Lorentz' elaboration of Maxwell's electrodynamics, the moving magnet and conductor problem, the negative aether drift experiments, as well as the Fizeau experiment, led Albert Einstein to develop the theory of special relativity in 1905, which provided a conclusive explanation for the aberration phenomenon. The term 'aberration' has historically been used to refer to a number of related phenomena concerning the propagation of light in moving bodies. Aberration should not be confused with stellar parallax. The latter is caused by a change in the position of the observer looking at a relatively nearby object (theoretically, at any object outside the Solar System); the former is related to light-time correction and relativistic beaming, although it is often considered separately from these effects. The term ''aberration'' may also be used to refer to unrelated phenomena in optical systems — optical aberration. ==Explanation== Aberration may be explained as the difference in angle of a beam of light in different inertial frames of reference. A common analogy is to the apparent direction of falling rain: If rain is falling vertically in the frame of reference of a person standing still, then to a person moving forwards the rain will appear to arrive at an angle, requiring the moving observer to tilt their umbrella forwards. The faster the observer moves, the more tilt is needed. The net effect is that light rays striking the moving observer from the sides in a stationary frame will come angled from ahead in the moving observer's frame. This effect is sometimes called the "searchlight" or "headlight" effect. In the case of annual aberration of starlight, the direction of incoming starlight as seen in the Earth's moving frame is tilted relative to the angle observed in the Sun's frame. Since the direction of motion of the Earth changes during its orbit, the direction of this tilting changes during the course of the year, and causes the apparent position of the star to differ from its true position as measured in the inertial frame of the Sun. While classical reasoning gives intuition for aberration, it leads to a number of physical paradoxes observable even at the classical level (see history). The theory of special relativity is required to correctly account for aberration. The relativistic explanation is very similar to the classical one however, and in both theories aberration may be understood as a case of velocity addition. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「aberration of light」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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