Flickering Stars?

Question

I always look up in the skies at night, but today I noticed 3 stars in a triangular position to each other, and each of them is flickering quite fast (like a broken lamp). Does this mean that the stars are very close or something else?

Answer 1

the flickering is mostly caused by turbulences in the atmosphere, warm air ascends, cold air decends - the scientific term is seeing

of course there are also variable stars which change their luminosity periodically, but changes are too slow for the human eye to see...
and then there are pulsars, fast rotating neutron stars, bacause of their huge gravitational field they send out light concentrated on the poles like a lighthouse, but they rotate with a frequency of ~1/100 s^-1 or faster so they are waaayy too fast for your eye to catch

so I think you simply had a bad seeing (much turbulences)

besides that you cannot conclude anything else

Answer 2

The flickering does not mean they are close to each other. The three stars could be light years from each other. Usually a flickering star can be caused by it's having a 'sister' star, a star so close they orbit each other. (Like 2 kids holding hands and spinning around) Usually one is much brighter than the other one, making it look like its flickering. I'm sure there are other reasons, atmospheric conditions, refraction, etc.

Answer 3

Stars flicker, or "twinkle" due to atmospheric disturbance.

Some stars do oscillate in brightness due to being double stars or for other reasons. However, these changes in brightness are very subtle compared to atmospheric effects, and may actually be indiscernable to the human eye.