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I have multiple subquestions but they are related.

  • How would an object look like, which is passing by?

  • How would a star look like we are travelling to near $c$? Would we see a large blue-shifted disk due to perspective?

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When the finite speed of light – the delay of the rays from the source – is taken into account, one encounters many optical effects aside from "how the world is in relativity effects" such as Lorentz contraction.

Flat lines look like arcs or cicles, one may see "behind himself", and there's of course the Doppler shift of the frequencies depending on the relative speed. Also, streetcars going from left to right are rotated around a vertical axis, and so on.

You may download Real Time Relativity as a great "relativistic 3D game". For a link and other comments on relativistic optical effects, see

http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/02/relativistic-optical-effects.html?m=1

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Wow! That's great. But I can see, that the perspective distortion makes the distant object even smaller. While getting fryed with blue shifted light from forward. – Calmarius Oct 1 '12 at 18:21

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