Why 'Stellar aberration' is tautological, does not prove the Earth's mobility and was disproven some 150 years ago

Common sense tells us that gravity would bend starlight and this easily explains the miniscule light diffraction observed with some stars and their starlight.

“The interpretation of these results (Michelson’s 1881 experiment) is that there is no displacement of the interference bands. The result of the hypothesis of a stationary ether is thus shown to be incorrect, and the necessary conclusion follows that the hypothesis is erroneous. This conclusion directly contradicts the explanation of aberration which has been hitherto generally accepted, and which presupposes that the Earth moves through the ether, the latter remaining at rest” (A. Michelson, “The relative motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous ether,” The American Journal of Science, Vol. 3, No. 22, 1881, p. 128)

The Michelson experiment of 1881 disproved stellar aberration. So did the 1871 Airy experiment. But no one is taught this.

Not so Stellar Aberration

In the last post we discussed stellar ‘parallax’ and why it does not prove heliocentricity and in fact completely upends planetary distance calculations from the Earth along with many other ‘modern scientific’ assumptions in astro-physics.

Related to the parallax is ‘stellar aberration’, which has been offered as a proof for heliocentrism since perhaps the early 17th century. Aberration is generally the first ‘observational proof’ of Copernicanism, given some 70-200 years after the theory was proposed by the confused Copernicus depending on who you believe. Pieroni, a Catholic astronomer who was friends with the self-promoter Galileo and Kepler the conniver, is sometimes credited with this ‘discovery’ in the early 17th century, though invention is a better description, given the poor calibration of the telescopes used in that era.

In the modern era ‘aberration’ was invented by James Bradley in 1725 though the dates vary from 1724-1729 depending on the source. Floating down the Thames, Bradley attempted to find a stellar parallax (Busch, 1838) but instead created his own aberration based on observations of the Draco or Dragon constellation (which apparently has not changed in its relationship with the Earth over 3500 years and through 1.8 Trillion miles of Earth movement!). Bradley found nothing as outlined below and fraudulently ‘recorded’ a fringe shift of light displacement 2 times the observable size.

What is it?

‘Aberration’ describes a purported phenomenon, where there appears to be an ‘aberration’ or displacement of star light as viewed from the Earth during different times of the year. The entire premise of ‘aberration’ is the same as that of ‘stellar parallax’ – it is tautological. The underlying assumption of light diffraction is the apriori assumption that the Earth is moving. This is unscientific.

A standard description of stellar aberration is:

…light consists of small particles which travel at a finite speed, and the light particles appear displaced in the direction the Earth was moving in the same way raindrops are displaced by the same effect of a moving Earth

Light, composed of photons (Einstein, 1905, 1921 Nobel prize), is thought to operate in waves (the standard model, de Broglie). For some 400 years there has been a wave-particle debate. No one really knows how light works. Light could be a wave of particles, or the emitted energy of moving electrons as photons either in a wave or singly, or an emission of frequency by the element’s unique atomic mass induced by moving electrons.

In any event, the aberration phenomenon claims to prove that any starlight, whatever your view of ‘light’ might be, is a displacement which must be due to a moving Earth. This is frankly absurd.

Stellar aberration model

Logically, a common-sense view would state that ‘light aberration’ as given above may occur for 4 reasons:

1-The is Earth moving,

2-Or the star is moving,

3-Or something between the Earth and the star is moving

4-Or the medium (aether) is causing the aberration

Just because you think you viewed a displacement or change in ‘starlight’ over a period of time does not mean you have proven the Earth is moving.

During the year, stars move or gyrate around their location. The precise path of this movement depends on where the star is in relation to the latitude from which we observe them on Earth. Over an entire year the star should be seen to revolve in a circle when observed from any location on Earth. Fair enough.

The Arc of the Copernican covenant

Observations dating from the 17^th century seem to infer that the Sun and planets show the same ‘aberration’ of an approximately 20.5 arc second. An arc second as a measurement is 1/3600 degrees meaning that there are 1,296,000 arc seconds in a full circle (calculated as 360 degrees × 60 seconds × 60 minutes). The only body exempt from this phenomenon is the Earth’s moon (Ostlie, Carrol).

The question is: what is causing the light from these celestial bodies to create elliptical shapes and why is the moon exempt?

Some answers are given below.

Bradley goes for a sail

In circa 1725, Bradley sailing down the Thames, observed the star Gamma Draconis, which is very close to the North Star, Polaris. Depending on your Earthly location, say Bradley’s view from the Thames River, or someone else observing from the equator, the eccentricity of this star’s ellipse will be different. Eccentricity simply means how ‘circular’ the ellipse or oval, will appear. The greater the distance from the north pole, the greater the eccentricity or less circular and more oval will be the ellipse.

The orbits of a satellite are oval (ellipse) shaped, they are not circular, a mistake made by Copernicus.

In fact, Bradley found nothing:

“….when discussing his observations after the discovery of aberration, found that the changes of declination of the stars could not all be accounted for by precession and aberration alone...found an intimate connection between these oscillations of the earth’s axis, to which he gave the name of Nutation.” (Godfray, p. 219).

Bradley’s appeal to a 20.5” arc in the star’s movement as being due to a 30 km/sec revolution of the Earth around the Sun assumes that the Sun is a fixed object. Without taking the Sun as fixed, Bradley could never have detected an aberration in Gamma Draconis. But according to modern cosmology, no object in the sky is fixed, and thus Bradley’s theory is nullified on that premise alone.

In any event he fraudulently reported an arc of 30-40 seconds far in excess of the 20 arc second viewed today. Airy’s 1871 experiment, designed to prove Bradleys observations, did the opposite and refuted it entirely.

Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions….

Light is affected by the medium of transference (or the aether) as well as the velocity of the source. Yet in modern cosmology and in Einsteinian theory there is no medium in space so the star light cannot be aberrated by a medium since none exists. This concept is of course wrong. Nothing means nothing. Gravity, magnetism, energy, waves of light and sound do not travel through ‘nothing’. But for convenience sake, let’s accept the Copernican fallacy at face value to analyse what may actually cause stellar aberration.

Pace ‘modern science’, the cause for stellar aberration could therefore arise from:

(a) the source of the light namely the star,

(b) the receiver of the light, in our case the Earth, or

(c) the light itself

Heliocentrists believe that stars are fixed notwithstanding their slight movement around their location and the Earth is mobile. This means that for Copernicans (a) is impossible. This leaves either (b) the receiver (Earth) or (c) the light itself as the cause.

Modern heliocentrism would claim that the receiver, or Earth, depending on its speed, determines when and how the star light is observed (from say the Draco constellation). That is, the faster the receiver is moving, the more the star light will be aberrated. This is part of the theory of Relativity and the relative motions of objects and observers. This explanation uses the invariant speed of light, which is also wrong, but leave that to the side for now.

The calculation

Within a vacuum, light purportedly travels at 186,000 miles per second and in the heliocentric system, the Earth is moving at 19 miles per second around the Sun. This assumption is wrong of course, but we can just accept it for now.

When we combine the speed of light with the Earth’s mobility, we can calculate light aberration as a ratio of the speed of light with the speed of Earth. But notice the tautology, I am assuming the Earth moves at a constant 30 km/sec.

How to do this:

· Take the arc tangent of 19 miles per second divided by 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light), which is 0.0057 degrees

· Light will be aberrated over the course of a year by 0.0057 degrees or about 20.5 seconds of an arc

· This aberration will cover a 20.5/1,296,000 total arc seconds patch of the 360º night sky, or roughly .00016% of the total sky,

This is a rather insignificant amount and barely noticeable and only detected with highly calibrated equipment (Godfray, Ostlie & Carrol). There are a lot of assumptions in the above Copernican view of stellar aberration but that is the main idea. Two relative bodies are both moving and the receiver of the light will witness an aberration due to relative movement.

Non-Copernican view

There are many other explanations to describe the miniscule ‘aberration’ which may or may not be valid.

1. First and most obvious, gravity bends starlight. Both Newton and Einstein understood this. The clearest, simplest explanation, which is unrelated to Copernicanism, is that the small fringe shifts in aberration, as nearly undetectable as they are, are a result of light being bent by the gravitation attraction of large orbs.

Refracted or diffracted light is aptly explained by Newton and this is probably what an instrument is picking up. The infinitesimally small arc changes if they exist, and they only appear to exist with the most advanced equipment, tell us nothing if we consider that gravity will bend light, and it is precisely light that we are looking at and measuring.

This is supported by Bradley’s own experiments in which he discusses ‘precession’ and ‘nutation’. Precession is a change in the direction of a rotating axis and nutation is a small oscillation around an axis, or a wobble. Both are caused by an outside torque, the influence of gravity and/or an imbalance in mass distribution. There is no need therefore to invent a moving Earth to explain a slight displacement in starlight.

2. In the neo-Tychonic or mixed helio-geo-centricity model, which is mathematically as justified as the heliocentric, there is no aberration of starlight. The phenomenon is created by the movement of the star around the Earth. The star field rotates around the Earth on the north/south celestial pole, but the pole itself revolves with a 20.5 arc second radius. As viewed from Earth, the motion of the stars on or near the celestial pole will form a circle in the north, an ellipse at 45º latitude and a hyperbola or flat oval at the equator (Popov, 383). This is exactly what is viewed in reality.

In the Tychonic system, as the universe rotates 365 times a year around the Earth, it will precess and nutate by 0.112 arc seconds per day, which will cause all the stars to move over the course of the year. Again, this perfectly comports with actual measurements. Such a model might be anathema to the modern who has endured a century of heliocentricity propaganda, but there is nothing unscientific about it.

More incorrect assumptions...

There is one other factor to mention and that is the speed of light and the difference between the source and the receiver of the star light. Modern heliocentrism believes:

• (a) star light is independent from the star once it is emitted from the star, and

• (b) the emitted star light is not independent of the motion of the receiver.

Neither of the above are accurate. In reality there appears to be a vector radiation of light, namely an electric field, and magnetic field, direction, from the star that travels in a linear direction to the viewer on Earth. So of course the emitted light is not only dependent on its source, but is also independent of the receiving observer. This was proven in 1871 by George Biddell Airy which refuted heliocentrism. Airy is of course never honestly taught or discussed.

Bottom Line

Stellar aberration or ‘displaced starlight’ proves nothing. The 1881 Michelson and the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiments disproved the aberration thesis by not finding a light interference fringe from intersecting beams on a ‘moving Earth’. Bradley’s observations found nothing to prove stellar aberration, assuming without proof, that the Earth was moving, and the Sun was immobile. His results were inflated and are unsupported by modern observations. Airy’s 1871 experiments also disproved Bradley’s claims.

We can therefore conclude that ‘aberration’ does not prove the Earth is moving, in fact it assumes that the Earth is moving. This is called a tautology. Slight light aberration phenomena if its exist, is easily explained by other cosmological models and common sense including the displacement force of gravity.

Most likely, the slight bending we see when we measure stars and their position relative to our Sun, is most likely due to the gradient in the Sun’s gravitational field. We know that light is delayed in a gravitational field. This would apply to the Sun as well as to the Earth.

Near the Sun’s gravitational attraction, light must be delayed more than it is further away from the Sun. This is common sense and is supported by Newtonian and Einsteinian theory. This explanation is simpler, more elegant and negates the fantasy world of curved space or apriori assumptions about Relativity and moving orbs. Settled science and all that.

All hail.

Sources

Antonello, Elio. “Water-filled telescopes.” (2014).

Popov, L., 2013, “Newtonian-Machian analysis of Neo-tychonian model of planetary motions,” Eur. J. Phys., 34, 383

Ostlie, D. A., and Carrol, B. W., 2007, An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics, 2^nd ed., San Francisco: Addison Wesley

Barbour, J., 2010, “The definition of Mach’s principle,” arXiv:1007.3368

Reduction of the Observations Made by Bradley at Kew and Wansted to Determine the Quantities of Aberration and Nutation, Dr. Busch, Assistant Astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Königsberg, Oxford University Press, 1838

Godfray, Hugh, A Treatise on Astronomy, Cambridge, MacMillan, 1866