Rays’ Change of Directions between Inertial Frames and Stellar Aberration

Abstract

The path of a light’s signal is one and the same in the universal space regardless of the inertial frame by which it is identified. However, only one frame can be taken stationary and identified with the universal space while all other frames are moving. The direction of the path of a light’s pulse in a moving frame is determined in terms of its direction in the stationary one; the result is utilized to explain stellar aberration and show that the tilted direction in the moving frame depends only on its velocity. The aberration increment vector is introduced and employed to determine the apparent position of a star at each point of the earth orbit. Aberration in an earth satellite relative to the geocentric frame is presented. The direction’s change of a light beam between graded inertial frames promotes explaining aberration in an earth’s satellite in parallel to stellar aberration on earth.