What makes the stars flicker ?

Question

What makes the stars flicker ?

Answer 1

anything that burns flickers like a candle. That is why satelites flying at night when you see them do not flicker.

Answer 2

I believe that it's due to the distortion of light waves as they travel through space. Some light waves arrive much faster to earth because they encounter less distortion. Other waves arrive later because they encounter more distortion. These distortions might be due to gravitational forces acting on those light waves. Well that's all I know.

Answer 3

too much cocaine & boozing.

Answer 4

So, what causes twinkling or scintillation? Well, as it turns out, the stars don’t really twinkle. Rather, this is an effect of our atmosphere. In space, the stars would appear as steady pinpoints. Turbulence in the atmosphere is largely responsible for the twinkling effect, so the steadier the atmosphere, the less the stars seem to twinkle and sparkle, and the more unsteady the atmosphere, the more the stars seem to twinkle and sparkle. Of course, that very turbulence also distorts the view for professional astronomers or for amateur astrophotographers, so while the twinkling might be pretty, serious astronomers hate to see twinkling stars.

Answer 5

Turbulence in the atmosphere. There are different pockets of air in between you and the star, and the different layers of the atmosphere bend the light in different directions. The motion of those air pockets makes the star's ray of light bend, so you see different brightnesses. Planets don't flicker (or flicker less) because they have a much wider angular berth due to being so much closer to us.

It's just like how things look wavy when you look over a hot grill in the summer, only on a smaller scale. An even better analogy is that looking at stars from inside our atmosphere is like birdwatching from the bottom of a swimming pool: the ripples distort the picture.

In addition to contributing turbulence, the atmosphere also acts like a prism when you look at stars near the horizon. Since the star colors get split into a rainbow plus the turbulence makes the star move around, it can appear like the star is changing color.

Answer 6

The Earth atmospshere

Answer 7

Only variable stars 'flicker', and that variation is over a minumum of several hours. Atmospheric aberations make any extraterrestrial light source appear unstable because the light is constantly being diffracted and reflected on the way down. This applies to the planets as well.

Planets are much closer than stars, so the light has less chance of interacting with interstellar media, and

Stars are more or less point sources, whereas planets are 'more' distributed, although the solid angle subtended by a planet is still rather small.

I have also heard an argument that planets are cool bodies and reflect light, rather than a hot body like a star which generates light.

Answer 8

The atmosphere creates that effect. If you look at stars from space they won't flicker.

Answer 9

dude- thats not a star its an airplane

Answer 10

the moving and irregular atmosphere diffracting their light

Answer 11

A couple of things - the earths atmosphere, for one. Also, all humans have some stigmatism in their eyes when it comes to looking at stars. Our eyes are just not smooth enough to actually focus in on a star - they are too far away. Otherwise we would see little round dots instead of little fuzzy dots.

Answer 12

Distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere.

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Answer 13

It is not the stars that flicker..they shine steadily..it is when the light from a star passes through the atmosphere that variations in our own atmosphere makes them appear to twinkle.