Optical Effects of Special Relativity

I didn't even think about blue shifting..... good video!

Excellent!

This is fascinating.
Sagan's "Cosmos" had a segment that presented something similar to this, except the imaginary traveler was on a motorbike, and the effects were created without sophisticated computer imaging.

It is a tribute to Sagan's vision and deep understanding that Cosmos was made decades ago yet his representations of relativistic phenomena are so similar to these modern computer-generated images.

adaseth ... it's basically due to "light aberration" effect. if you have a rain guage and there's no wind, raindrops fall into the vertical guage. if you then run forward with the guage, you'll have to tilt it forwards because the raindrops appear to slant toward you - now just substitute photons & direction for raindrops & the orientation of the rain guage. relativistic contraction will lessen the effect, but for a while as you're accelerating, the building will get squished to the center

One thing doesn't add up here- when approoaching the speed of light, the distances get shortened, so why does the building seem to be moving away? Shouldn't it rather be getting closer?

...an interesting possibility....

Heh, yeah, she sounds kinda like GladOS.

What about digital cameras?

same thing, digital cameras still have a shutter speed (the time the spend collecting light), but don't necessarily have the shutter.

So the same thing happens with them as with a film camera

dmanschaumbizzie is right oh my god it is the light at the end of the tunnel (3:17)!!! This explains it all, when you walk toward the light when you die you are rapidly accelerating and being converted into energy thus being able to move at the speed of light and once you reach that speed everything becomes dark and cold.