REU student Quinn Looker and Prof. M. Lister have developed an Adobe flash applet that illustrates the concept of superluminal motion in relativistic jets. The user can set the viewing angle, intrinsic speed (Lorentz factor), and distance to the jet, and then watch how a luminous relativistic object effectively chases its own light signals to give the illusion of superluminal transverse motion. You will need a copy of Adobe Flash player to run the simulation.

Click here to run the applet