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Celestia & faster than light travel



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 24th 05, 01:12 PM
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Default Celestia & faster than light travel

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

  #2  
Old August 24th 05, 01:51 PM
William C. Keel
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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
  #4  
Old August 25th 05, 05:50 AM
Eric
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William C. Keel wrote:

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


Whats it supposed to do? for me its just a static page with a bunch of
garbage on it.
Eric

  #6  
Old August 25th 05, 04:52 PM
Brian Tung
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Ross 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?


As others have pointed out, there's no way, really, to say "Forgetting
that you're moving faster than light..." because that changes everything.
So I'm going to assume your question to be, assuming that the speed of
light is infinite (or at least much faster than the speed at which you're
moving in Celestia), is the simulation realistic?

It's been a while since I've seen this (and I think it was a demo), but
I believe the answer is yes--it is realistic assuming an infinite speed
of light.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt
  #7  
Old August 25th 05, 07:17 PM
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Thanks to everyone who replied on this thread.

I note the point that the problem of moving faster than light cannot be
ignored. In a discussion I'd been having, it was claimed that the stars
are so far apart that if you moved from one star to another you
wouldn't see stars whizzing past you at high speed like you do in
Celestia and in many science fiction movies and television programs.
However arguing that one viewpoint that breaks the laws of physics is
somehow "correct" and another viewpoing that breaks the laws of physics
is "incorrect" doesn't really make sense.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 




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