wrote:
Hi. In Celestia, if you travel between stars then you see other stars
moving (relative to your position) past you on all sides like to often
do in science fiction movies and TV shows. Apart from the fact that
your point of view is moving orders of magnitude faster than the speed
of light, is the way the stars appear to move realistic?

Thanks in anticipation,

Ross-c

There are some realistic simulations of the appearance of the sky
during relativistic motion (not quite superluminal!), the
so-called starbow, at
http://quasar.cc.osaka-kyoiku.ac.jp/...SF/starbow.htm
The Greek characters are recognizable (I don't get the Japanese ones...).
Beta is the fraction of the speed of light (with respect to the mean
rest frame of the local stars) with which the observer is moving,
in this case toward Orion. Aberration bunches the stars ahead of
you, and the ones most directly in front are significantly
blueshifted as well. I thought for a while about doing a more
complete calculation including the UV and IR appearance of the
sky, diffuse Milky Way as well as stars - then, on a deadline,
decided that wasn't going to happen...

Bill Keel