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Aberration, stellar

From Encyclopædia

The aberration of starlight is the apparent displacement of the path of light from a star caused by the orbital motion of the Earth. James BRADLEY, attempting to measure stellar PARALLAXES, first discovered this effect in 1725, when he observed that all stars seemed to shift their position as much as 20.5 seconds of arc in a period of one year, in a way that could not be accounted for. In the same way that an umbrella must be tilted during a vertical rainfall in proportion to the speed of the pedestrian, so the angle of a telescope pointing at a star must be adjusted for stellar aberration.

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