Visual perspective at the speed of light:

[Lamdbaenergy]

I have been doing a lot of reading about this and it seems really, really interesting. Correct me if I am wrong on any of this, but I'm going to attempt to summarize how traveling at the speed of light, or at least 99.998 percent the speed of light, would look in two different cases: in interstellar space, and on the surface of Mars.

Okay, so on Mars, as your vehicle suddenly and somehow accelerates to 99.998 percent the speed of light, light from objects towards the center of your vision appear to shift into the bluer part of the spectrum. Meanwhile, light from objects farther out from your center of vision appear to become more red shifted. This eventually results in your view of the world turning into a tiny circle of bright, blue shifted light directly in front of you, and a surrounding background of blackness outside of that since the wavelengths would shift into infrared.

Now in interstellar space, as your ship reached 99.998 percent the speed of light, pretty much the same kind of event would occur. The universe in front of you becomes more blue shifted, including light from neighboring stars; this means that eventually the light coming from those stars would shift into the X-ray range, no longer visible to you. However, light from the cosmic microwave background would shift into the visible spectrum, causing a bright white disk of light to appear in front of you. All light from other stars will still be there, again, (hence X-ray) but with too much energy to be perceived as optical; so the universe around the center of your vision basically fades into complete blackness while the universe at your center of vision becomes brighter and brighter as the CMB actually becomes visible. Light from stars farthest out to your center of vision probably just shift out into infrared too, on the other hand, but the blue shift towards the center becomes much more noticeable.

Was that accurate, and if so, what other effects would you notice that I might not know about yet?
I'd like to know because this stuff is very cool!

 

[Drakkith]

Looks okay to me. Just hope you can survive the bombardment of x-rays and gamma rays.

 

[Drakkith]

Also, take a look at the following link: http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/4dperspective.html

Note that there will be a significant change in perspective, enabling you to see objects that are effectively behind you.

Another interesting link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111018.html

 

[Bandersnatch]

Have you seen this game?
http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

 

[pmacias]

I can confirm that your understanding of visual perspective at the speed of light is generally accurate. However, there are a few other effects that you may not have considered.

Firstly, as you approach the speed of light, time dilation would occur. This means that time would appear to slow down for you relative to someone observing you from a stationary position. This would also affect the perception of light, making it appear to move slower and causing objects to appear distorted or elongated.

Additionally, as you mentioned, the Doppler effect would cause light from objects in front of you to shift towards the blue end of the spectrum and light from objects behind you to shift towards the red end. However, this effect would also cause the light from objects to be compressed or stretched, making them appear brighter or dimmer respectively.

Furthermore, at such high speeds, the effects of gravitational lensing would also come into play. This is the bending of light around massive objects, such as stars or galaxies. As you travel through the universe at the speed of light, you would encounter many of these objects, causing the light around you to bend and distort, potentially creating some very interesting visual effects.

Overall, the visual perspective at the speed of light is a complex and fascinating topic. There may be other effects that we are not yet aware of, and further research and experimentation would be needed to fully understand the visual experience at such high speeds.