Rick describes a view that would be seen looking out a window. The view
on the bridge was afforded by a monitor, not a window. On the bridge
monitor, the magnification and direction of view could be adjusted. It
would be fairly simple to adjust for Doppler shifts and other
relativistic effects, as well.
In a view out a window, aren't the effects of time dilation included in
the relativistic Doppler shift? Length contraction would foreshorten
the view, maximally in the forward direction and with decreasing
foreshortening with increasing angle from the forward direction. Would
that have an effect on the apparent magnitudes and relative magnitudes
of individual objects?
Also, as the visible light is shifted into ultraviolet, infrared is
shifted into visible, making cooler objects, such as dust clouds,
visible. In addition, stars also emit in infrared, but at lower
intensities; therefore, the brightest stars would still be visible, but
dimmer, even after all their visible light has been shifted to
ultraviolet.
Daniel Crowe
Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics
Ardmore Regional Center
dcrowe@sotc.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Forum for Physics Educators [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu] On
Behalf Of Rick Tarara
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 7:39 AM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: [PHYS-L] The view from the Enterprise.
To return to some physics.....
I'm doing some updates on my animations and want to try and simulate the
view (both forwards and backwards) from a spaceship as is speeds up and
approaches the speed of light.
If I ignore (for a minute) the relativistic effects and consider only
the
Doppler shift, I think what one would see is that ahead of you the light
is
shifted towards blue--a bit more so in the center of view. As the speed
gets high enough, the light is shifted to the ultraviolet and the stars
seem
to go out--starting in the center of view and spreading outwards--like a
hole opening and expanding. Behind, the light is shifted towards red,
but I
think it takes higher velocities before being shifted to the infrared.
If that is more or less right--and please correct this if wrong--then
what
happens when we add in time dilation and spatial contraction? How would
these effect what is seen by Kirk sitting on the bridge--viewing say a
60
degree arc of space in front of him (seeing for the most part stars in
this
galaxy) as the ship (under 'impulse' power only) speeds up from rest to
near
the speed of light?
[My 'classical' animation test works very nicely--but I'm sure it is too
simplistic since the purpose of the overall animation is to 'show'
relativistic effects. ;-( ]
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