C-ship: Relativistic ray
traced images
Welcome aboard C-ship, exploring flight near the speed of light! C-ship helps you understand Einstein's theory of Special Relativity intuitively through the medium of computer-synthesised images. To view the images in this document, you need a graphics-oriented Web browser.
We'll be looking at lots of pictures on our journey. Sending large pictures across the Internet consumes precious network bandwidth and can take a long time. So, I'll show small "thumbnail" views of most pictures, with words "GIF" and "JPEG" beneath the image. When you click on the word, you'll see the full-size image. Most of the images are understandable from the thumbnail views. It's up to you which images you'd like to examine in more detail. If your browser supports in-line JPEG images, click on JPEG, otherwise use GIF. JPEG images look much better and take much less time to transmit to your computer, but not all Web browsers understand them.
Our Sturdy Craft
The Lattice Galaxy
The Lorentz Contraction
The Dilation of Time
The Doppler Shift
The Aberration of Light
Mission: Flying through the Lattice
Mission: Trans-Lattice Shuttle
References and Further Reading