If an astronaut in a spaceship saw a star ahead that seemed to be growing bluer as time passed?
413991
They are moving towards each other at an increasing rate.
1173888
when he looked up at the stars
409741
If you are talking about the faster spinning star, then that would be a neutron star.  However there was recently some info on the fasting moving star across our sky, see this site ...\n\nhttp://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/fastestpulsar.html\n\nThis star is moving so quickly, 1100 kilometers per second, that it could get from New York to London in 5 seconds
874063
You might have seen a planet if it was bright, but also a lot of stars are red.  Cooler stars give off a red color.  There is nothing unusual about it.
1002813
The key point to this whole question is if you could travel faster than light.  Since at our present knowledge of physics says no, and our current tech is not able to get anywhere remotely near the speed of light let alone faster than it, we will assume this hypothetical question implies these two things don't matter.\n\nIf so, then yes you could see into the past if you had an adequate viewing device which could discern the light you would receive at the end of your journey--light which you left behind by going faster than it.  But to see exaclty the number of years in the past as the light year distance you travelled, you woould have to move instantaneously.  If you had any non-relativistic travel time, you would have to consider time of your journey to determine how far in past you were seeing.  If you travelled 1.1 times the speed of light, you would only get to see .1*light year distance in years past.
1151814
Yes but only to the person observing from one comet the speed of one is only relitive to the still space it occupies , but yes compared to the other it would appeare to go faster than the speed of light.
220036
I think youd see a new planet ;)
36596
That's a big "if", that's some car!\n\nOK, I'll go there:\n\nThe photons in the forward direction could not escape thre filaments so they'd build up there, but the filaments would not blow because they'd be infinite mass.  Boring answer, really.  Nothing would happen.
1102482
If you wish upon a star.
658414
The brighter it is, the cooler the star is.\nThe darker it is, the hotter the star is
1085806
I remember Carl Sagan talking about this on one of his appearances on the Johnny Carson Show.  \nBecause the speed of light is always a constant to any observer, the information would still be reaching you at the speed of light.  Now, based on spatial compression and time dilation on your part possibly you would receive more than one of earth's second's worth of information in the time it takes one of your ship's seconds to elapse. But, bear in mind depending upon how close you got, you would need to slow down so as not to impact ar go by and be going away from earth, so you would eventually come back into synch with earth's space-time frame of reference.
996350
Try red, white and blue stars!  That would be cute.
471954
Greetings,\n\nI would imagine they both could be depending on the size, age, and life cycle of the particular star.\n\n-matt
491273
Right now, we're not even close to faster-than-light (or FTL) travel.  All out traveling has to be done at less than the speed of light, so most stars are farther away than we can get to.  Even at half the speed of light (which is far faster than we can travel) it would take 8 years to reach the nearest star, not counting the Sun.  (Not to mention 8 more years to get home afterward!)  Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so our best hope is to do just like they do on Star-Trek.  The found a way to bend spacetime to get to distant stars without actually moving through normal space, which had less of a curve.  Nobody has any idea how to do that now, so we just have to keep expanding our understanding of science until we do.  Until then, I think our best bet on meeting intelligent extraterrestrial life is to hope for them to come to us!
1159975
No.  I think it can be generalized that humans judge motion in two ways.  First, a physical reaction; feeling a car on the road, or wind in your face.  Second, a visual reference; such as trees buzzing past or a familiar landmark getting closer.\n\nSince there is no "atmosphere" to speak of in orbit (at least not what we'd consider an atmosphere anyway), there is nothing physical to oppose his motion.  Therefore, from his perspective, he is just sitting there.  Also, since the shuttle that he's tethered to is also moving at the same speed, it doesn't appear to move either (unless of course the astronaut is moving toward, away from, or parallel to the ship somehow).  Regardless, with no frame of reference, there is no sensation of motion.\n\nWell, what about the Earth?  Surely that is a frame of reference.  Well, yes and no.  Sure, one could look at the rotating Earth below them and get some sense of how fast they were moving.  However, anyone who has taken a road trip and has been driving towards a mountain range (i.e. driving across Nebraska towards the Rockies) knows that something that far away and that large can fool the senses into believing that you've stopped.  Therefore, I would (and this is an opinion) discount the Earth as a frame of reference.
924822
This is something related to what is called the Doppler effect. You can experience it first hand when a police car is approaching and then going away: the sound of the siren is higher pitched when it is getting closer, and lower pitched when it goes away.\nThe same effect occurs with light.  A light emitter -- a star of a whole galaxy -- will seem to be bluer (higher frequency) if it is getting closer, or redder if it is moving away.  How much bluer or redder is called blue (or red) shift. If one knows what should be the neutral color of the light (and we do, thanks to the spectroscopic lines of emission) then the speed of the object can be derived by said amount of blue or red shift.  This is what allowed Edwin Hubble to deduct that the universe was in expansion, as most galaxies have a redshift that is greater the further they are.
761107
Arthur C Clarke, I believe, wrote a wonderful short story called "The Star" you should check it out if you can. It does pertain to your question as well.