The gravitational deflection of starlight as it passes near the edge of the Sun was predicted by both Newton and Einstein but a careful analysis of this effect reveals it to be an optical illusion and not the physical event of a photon’s path actually curving when it interacts with Einstein’s invention of a four-dimensional spacetime continuum aether. The measured angle of the effect results from the expansion of Earth during the 8 minutes it takes for the photons to travel between the sun and Earth. If photons really were deflected by gravitating bodies, they would become so jumbled up that astronomical observations of the cosmos would be impossible.