In search of the ’’starbow’’: The appearance of the starfield from a relativistic spaceship

Abstract

One prediction for the appearance of the starfield from a moving reference frame has been circulated widely despite physically objectionable features. We reexamine the physical basis for this effect. To the well-known aberation and Doppler effects we add the transformation of intensity of light upon a change of reference frame. We integrate the transformed spectrum of a star, represented as a blackbody, over the response function of the human eye. We present a one-parameter function to represent the dependence of the apparent visual magnitude of different stars upon Doppler factor. We conclude with a sequence of computer-generated figures to show the appearance of Earth’s starfield at various velocities. A ’’starbow’’ does not appear.