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Hmm, I will give it one last try. Forget everything up till now : ) Break the loop and start fresh. Here is a slightly different topic but it may help you understand the principle.

The first thing to note is that you can’t see something until the light from it reaches you. It isn’t instantaneous. Now lets pretend that light (photons) are moving slowly like snow or rain. You go get in your car and observe the snow falling straight down. Then you slowly start driving the car down the road, gradually accelerating. As you accelerate you start to notice that the snow is not coming from straight above anymore it is coming from somewhere in front and and above you. Now as the car gets going really fast you notice that the snow is coming straight at the car as if the source of the snow is straight in front of you being blown horizontally by the wind. If the snow was photons you would see the sun above you as you got in the car and then as you accelerated to relativistic speeds you would see the sun directly in front of you.

If you watch many science fiction flicks you will occasionally see the effect illustrated when the space craft accelerate to faster than light speed. They bring the whole universe down to a single point of light as they accelerate. Some science fiction flicks are more accurate than others : )

You could also think of it like a strobe light except that the flashes of light tell you where your dancing partner was and that they have moved since you last saw them in the light. It is still pretty much the same effect.

As to the rain aberration experiment, I fully covered it in my previous post.

Hmm, I will give it one last try. Forget everything up till now : ) Break the loop and start fresh.

But I've already put out two great examples and each one only needs a yes or a no answer. Why do you refuse to answer these? My observation is that usually when someone refuses to follow a certain thought path it is because they know that if they go there they'll be proven wrong.

Here they are, again:

Lets say that I'm on a mountaintop park, where there is a merry go around. It's a beautiful bright sunny warm morning, and as I sit on the merry go around, I look out and notice that the sun is exactly horizontal. Now let us further pretend that I get the merry go around rotating at 17 minutes per turn. This way, it'll have turned 180 degrees in the time it takes the light to reach the earth from the sun. So now let's say I have a very sensitive gravity meter which can measure the sun's gravitational pull.
Now let me ask you - which way will the sun's gravity appear related to it's light? Will the gravity of the sun be in the east while its gravitational pull will be toward the west?

And here's merry go around number two:

If I am on a merry go around, and it's turning, and there is a pulsing water jet and laser (which pulse in unison) both pointing at the center of the merry go around. The pulse rate and turn rate of the merry go around are such that no water pulse overlaps the life of the previous, and the merry go around turns 1/4 of a turn in the time it takes the leading edge of a water pulse to reach the center of the merry go around. Now it's a warm day and I'm sitting in the middle of the merry go around, with a good water proof compass. The water jet and laser are exactly north, 20 feet, of the center of the merry go around.
Will I not find that every time either light or water hits me that it will be coming exactly from the north?
Logical answers would be "Yes, No, or Yes but this doesn't carry over to the situation with the sun and its apparent position."

So which is it, on these two experiments? They are careful and simple, and a simple "yes" or "no" would be perfectly reasonable and would solve a lot of confusion. By the way, if it simplifies things, the first merry go around (or both for all I care) could be placed right on the north pole.

Thanks,

-Jesse