title: Optical mechanism for aberration of starlight.
abstract: We present a physical-optics-based theory for aberration of starlight and show that the influence of the moving sensor on the incident stellar wavefront combined with a finite velocity of light within the sensor can fully account for the aberration phenomena. Our treatment differs from all previous derivations because we include wavefront-imaging physics within the sensor model. Our predictions match existing Earth-based aberration measurements but differ from predictions of the special relativistic-based theory for larger velocities. We derive design parameters for an experiment using an Earth-based sensor containing a refractive optical medium that would experimentally differentiate between these two theories and yield an independent experimental test of time dilation.
authors: Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, Astrophysics Research Laboratory, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0593, USA. raw@Colorado.edu
authors: Robert A
authors: RA
authors: Woodruff