Aberration of starlight experiment

TL;DR

This paper proposes an Earth-based optical telescope experiment to distinguish whether starlight aberration arises from relativistic effects or optical sensor effects, also providing a test of relativistic time dilation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup to differentiate between models of starlight aberration and tests relativistic time dilation independently.

Findings

Discriminates between aberration models using optical measurements

Provides an independent test of relativistic time dilation

Proposes a feasible Earth-based experimental approach

Abstract

We propose an experiment using a conventional optical telescope to determine whether aberration of starlight results from special relativistic effects external to a measurement sensor or from optical effects within a sensor. The proposed measurements would discriminate between the two starlight aberration models in an Earth-based experiment. In addition, the measurements would yield an independent experimental test of relativistic time dilation.