What is a blinking star and is our sun one?

Question

I just pretty much want to know. Is our sun a blinking star, and a explanation big or small, on what a blinking star is?

Answer 1

Do you mean a variable star?

" variable star

--------------------------------------...

A star that changes in brightness. Variable stars fall into two general categories: intrinsic variables, in which physical changes, such as pulsations or eruptions, are involved, and extrinsic variables, in which the light output fluctuates due to eclipses or stellar rotation."

And no, we do not consider our sun a variable star. Neither is it a pulsar.



Other than that Gothikas pulsar ( a rapidly spinning neutron star) sounds right too.

Answer 2

A blinking star is a star in another solar system that appears to blink when a planet passes in front of it temporarily causing the star to appear dimmer from earth.  Scientists wouldn't really apply this terminology to our sun but I guess you could call it a blinking star because both Mercury and Venus do occassionally transition across the sun.  That is all a blinking star is.  If a star appears to twinkle from earth it is simply due to the distortions of our planet's upper atmopshere.  



Quasars are actually very young and active galaxies that are located billions of light years away.  They are not stars as someone else has said.  

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

there is no such thing as a blinking star. you see stars blink in our atmosphere due to clouds, pollution, and smoke. those things reflect more red light. so when they pass between you and the star it gets more red and when they move out of the way the star becomes more blue.

Answer 4

A blinking star is when a planet or some other body passes in front of the start. It is how we know there are other planets out there. If you watch something and then it goes dark for a bit then you know a body has passed in front of it.

So yes, ours is a blinking star, but only to observers from other solar systems.

Answer 5

Stars don't blink.  What appears to be blinking in the night sky is just atmospheric distortion.

Answer 6

A blinking star is called a Quasar,it sends not only flashing light,but a radio frequency.If your looking at stars from Earth,they all seem to twinkle because the atmosphere bends and distorts the light emitted from them making them twinkle.Our sun is not a blinking star,its constant.

Answer 7

Not sure what you mean by "blinking star", that's not a term used in astronomy.

There are variable stars - these are ones that either pulsate in and out or become brighter and dimmer from processes within the stars.

There are eclipsing variables - these seem to dim and brighten because either a planet or dim star orbits the star we see and when the dimmer object crosses in front of the star the light dims.

And there are rotating variables - these seem to dim and brighten because part of their surface is actually brighter than other parts, and as the dimmer areas face us we see a little less light.

Our sun is not a "blinking star", it is not a variable star.

It is magnetically active, and from 10 light years away or so it may appear as a long-term variable due to occasional bright solar flares.

Answer 8

I'm not sure what they meant by "blinking star". Sure, they could've meant stars with planet transits, but I think an earlier answerer had the right idea, but wrong terminology.

Pulsars, (NOT quasars) are stars that emit radiation in the direction of their magnetic poles. As the pulsar spins, Earth-based observatories detect the radiation. The star appears to blink, because each flash is when the magnetic pole of the pulsar is aimed at Earth and we detect the radiation. Pulsars have spin periods ranging from a few seconds, to a few milliseconds.

No, our star is not a pulsar.

Pulsars are formed in supernovae, if the core isn't massive enough to be a black hole. Pulsars are usually around 20 km across.