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- Willem de Sitter's argument against emission theory. According to simple emission theory, light moves at a speed of c with respect to the emitting object. If this were true, light emitted from a star in a double-star system from different parts of the orbital path would travel towards us at different speeds. For certain combinations of orbital speed, distance, and inclination, the "fast" light given off during approach would overtake "slow" light emitted during a recessional part of the star's orbit. Thus Kepler's laws of motion would apparently be violated for a distant observer. Many bizarre effects would be seen, including as illustrated, unusually shaped variable star light curves such as have never been seen, extreme Doppler red- and blue-shifts in phase with the light curves, implying highly non-Keplerian orbits, splitting of the spectral lines , and if the binary star system is resolvable in a telescope, the periodic breaking up of the stellar images into multiple images. (en)
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