Page:Light waves and their uses.djvu/168

150 in the direction bd (Fig. 104); the raindrop will still fall exactly vertically, but if the gun advances laterally while the raindrop is within the barrel, it strikes against the side. In order to make the raindrop move centrally along the axis of the barrel, it is evidently necessary to incline the gun at an angle such as bad. The gun barrel is now pointing, apparently, in the wrong direction, by an angle whose tangent is the ratio of the velocity of the observer to the velocity of the raindrop.

According to the modulatory theory, the explanation is a trifle more complex; but it can easily be seen that, if the medium we are considering is motionless and the gun barrel represents a telescope, and the waves from the star are moving in the direction ad, they will be concentrated at a point which is in the axis of the telescope, unless the latter is in motion. But if the earth carrying the telescope is moving with a velocity something like twenty miles a second, and we are observing the stars in a direction approximately at right angles to the direction of that motion, the light from the star will not come to a focus on the axis of the telescope, but will form an image in a new position, so that the telescope appears to be pointing in the wrong direction. In order to bring the image on the axis of the instrument, we must turn the telescope from its position through an angle whose tangent is the ratio of the velocity of the earth in its orbit to the velocity of light. The velocity of light is, as before stated, 186,000 miles a second—200,000 in round numbers—and the velocity of the earth in its orbit is roughly twenty miles a second. Hence the tangent of the angle of aberration would be measured by the ratio of 1 to 10,000.