Why do stars twinkle?

1. Why do stars twinkle?

2. But exactly how do temperature variations cause twinkling?

3. Why doesn't a big object like the sun or the moon twinkle?

4. Then why doesn't a planet twinkle, since it is small enough to our eyes?

5. What are thermals?

Written by: LEE Boon-ying

 (Source: NASA)

1. Why do stars twinkle?

Since no astronaut while traveling in space has reported seeing stars twinkling, the
effect must be atmospheric, i.e. due to air. However, it is not exactly correct to say that
it is due to turbulence in the air.

Mere turbulence in the air is just what we call wind. Wind does not make stars twinkle,
because light travels at a great speed --- over 1 billion km/h.

What distorts the light coming from a star is temperature variations in the air. As you
probably know already, air temperature varies a great deal. It typically decreases by 6.5
degrees Celsius for every kilometre you go up, and this accords with the experience
that it feels cooler up in the mountains. Also, on a hot day, you may notice the
shimmering waves (thermals) that come off a heated road and make a distant car
appear wavy.

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3. But exactly how do temperature variations cause twinkling?

When light enters a transparent medium, such as air, it generally changes direction, i.e.
it is scattered. By how much it changes direction, i.e. bent, however, depends on the
temperature. Warm air bends light less, while cool air bends more, because in warm air
the air molecules are further apart from each other, producing less scattering.

Now any star, except the sun, is so far away that practically, it is sending only a single
ray of light towards us. As that ray enters the atmosphere, it is scattered differently as it
 passes through air of different temperatures. When it is scattered away from us, the star
seems to disappear for a moment. When it is scattered into our eyes, it seems to
reappear, resulting in a twinkle.

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5. Why doesn't a big object like the sun or the moon twinkle?

For the sun or the moon, there are so many light rays coming our way that it does not
matter some of them are scattered away, so long as the remaining ones are scattered
towards us. So the image looks steady.

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7. Then why doesn't a planet twinkle, since it is small enough to our eyes?

Planets are actually not so small as the stars, which can be treated as points of light. To
show this, you don't need a telescope. A pair of binoculars is enough to show that they
are not small. So they don't twinkle.

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9. What are thermals?

Thermals are unstable air caused by heating. Rising vertically, they may come from a
sun-lit ground or off the sun-facing side of a mountain or cliff. Birds, such as eagles,
are expert at exploiting thermals, gliding effortlessly in air by riding on them. In
aviation sports, paragliders adopt the same principle.

Why do stars twinkle?

In: Astronomy, Stars [Edit categories]
Answer:
Stars appear to twinkle (blink) because the light from them must reach us by passing through the
atmosphere of the earth. By doing this, the light will experience some "distortion" (refraction is
the physics term) to a greater or lesser degree.

We see this because of light's passage through layers of air with differing temperatures,
pressures, densities, moisture content and other factors. All of them will have a subtle effect on
the light, and it will "waver" a bit so that we get a "twinkle" when we look at the stars.
Temperature differences are well known for distorting light, and the "heat waves" we see when
objects are viewed through air with differing temperatures in the path of the light are things we
can generally recall. On a hot day, air above the heated surface of a dark colored vehicle appears
to "shimmer" because of the "heat" rising from the vehicle. Light from the stars came a long way
to get here for us to see it, but it is its passage through earth's atmosphere that gives it the greatest
difficulty. And we see the difficulty the light has getting through the atmosphere 'cause it just
can't stay in a straight line. The small "shifts" the light takes in its travel appear as the "twinkle"
of the stars.

The apparent twinkling of stars is actually caused by our atmosphere. As light passes through it,
it is slightly interfered with. The lower a star is, the more atmosphere its light is having to pass
through, so stars nearer the horizon seem to twinkle a lot more than those higher up or overhead.

Clouds, heat waves and other distortions in our atmosphere momentarily blocking the view of
the star from earth. Stars twinkle because of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.

Stars twinkle (and planets do not) because stars appear to us only as points of light. For instance,
the very nearest star (other than the Sun) presents no bigger a disk to us than a dime would at a
hundred miles away. The tiny aperture means the stream of light is easily perturbed by motion in
the atmosphere, generally caused by rising heat. In space, stars do not twinkle.

Curiosities: Why do stars appear to twinkle

in the night sky?
Nov. 1, 2010

028

Courtesy European Space Agency (ESA/Hubble).

Stars twinkle because we view them through our atmosphere, says James Lattis, director of
University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Place. “Seen from the moon, where there is no
atmosphere, stars do not twinkle at all, but here on Earth starlight passes through many miles of
air on its way to our eyes.”

A ray of starlight bends slightly each time it enters warmer or cooler air, Lattis says, and this
happens frequently as the ray passes through the atmosphere. “Each temperature zone is
something like a bubble of warmer or cooler air, and they are usually rising and falling, which
means that the path of the starlight is constantly and randomly shifting,” Lattis says. “We see that
unsteady shifting as twinkling.”
So why don’t planets twinkle? “Except for the sun, stars are so far away that they look like
dimensionless points to us, so their rays of light reach our eyes in a very narrow beam,” Lattis
says. “As that thin beam twitches, the star twinkles.”

Planets are so much closer that we can actually see their disks, which means a much thicker
bundle of light rays reaches our eyes, and each takes a slightly different path through the
atmosphere, Lattis says. “The shifting of the atmosphere causes a twinkle in any given point on
the planet’s disk, but these points average out, so planets generally don't twinkle nearly as much
as stars.”