Stellar and Planetary Aberration

For some time the writer has been seeking improved understanding of the several kinds of aberration—these being rather superficially explained in most texts, particularly texts of relativity theory. Indeed, in some of the more highly regarded of these (e.g., Møller 1972) the phenomenon of stellar aberration is so slightingly treated that use of the formulas provided would literally yield wrong answers. During much of this investigation it seemed that the fault lay with special relativity theory or with the Lorentz transformation. This may still, or may not, be the case. The reader will have to judge. Interest particularly in stellar aberration has increased of late [cf., Ives 1950, Eisner 1967, Phipps 1989, Hayden 1993, etc.] With help from recent studies by Marmet (1994) and Sherwin (1993) it has become apparent to the writer that with suitable interpretation relativity theory can accommodate both principal types of optical aberration, planetary and stellar. The purpose of the present paper is to confirm this assertion, to exhibit stellar aberration as (in a sense) a limiting case of planetary aberration, to seek a physical model of the phenomenon, to describe observations that could be made to test the model, and to touch on residual aberration issues that remain unsettled in the context of relativity theory.