Galactic aberration over 500 Myr for an observer looking towards Galactic north. The curve shows the apparent path of a hypothetical quasar, currently located exactly at the north galactic pole, as seen from the Sun (or solar system barycentre).The points along the path show the apparent positions after 0, 50, 100, …Myr due to the changing velocity of the Sun in its epicyclic orbit around the galactic centre. The point labelled GC is the position of the quasar as seen by an observer at rest with respect to the galactic centre. The point labelled CMB is the position as seen by an observer at rest with respect to the cosmic microwave background. The Sun’s orbit was computed using the potential model by McMillan (2017) (see also Sect. 4), with current velocity components derived from the references in Sect. 4.1. The Sun’s velocity with respect to the CMB is taken from Planck Collaboration III (2020).