Why do stars appear to "twinkle" and/or change colour?

Answer 1

stars twinkle because they are far away. the light that is emitted from stars has to travel a long way to reach our eyes.
the light that is emitted by a star travels through space quite easily but when it comes to the earth's atmosphere, it has to pass through different layers of air with different densities in the atmosphere. some layers of air in the atmosphere are thicker than others and probablly have a higher or lower density than others. it is this difference in densities, that light refracts (or bends) on entering the different layers.
it is this constant bending of light several times that makes the star appear to twinkle.
in comparison, planets do not twinkle and appear as bright dots in the sky because they are much closer to the earth as compared to stars which are thousands of light years away.

Answer 2

Stars change colors only in accordance with the H-R Diagram which relates to the size and the color of the star. It changes color due to the behavior of the gases. It is an illusion that it twinkles. Our eyes make it twinkle because, the slightest scratches on the sensitive cornea makes our minds that stars twinkle.

Answer 3

stars in the sky appear to be twinkling as we view them through various layers where the light gets refracted many times. and even the the moving clouds is also a reason for a twinkling sight.

Answer 4

They do not change color, atleast from what I've seen. But they twinkle because the Earth's atmosphere gets in the way of the light emitted from the stars.

Answer 5

Most of the stars are not actually star. They are like earth, mars, jupitar etc. or some of them are sattelite. So they haven't their own lights like the Sun or other stars. Most of them just borrowed the lights of the actual stars & then shining. So they are twinkling & / or change colour. Actual star never twinkle.

Answer 6

your answer to why stars twinkle is there. with the stars changing color do you mean why are some stars red or some blue? cause the gas composition and temperature within the stars. stars dont go from red to blue and blue to white(yellow) right away it takes thousands of years for stars to change colors adn its due to its chemical composition. color usually tells the age of a star (sort of)

Answer 7

stars r at far off distance
when their light approaches earth (better say our eyes)
it gets hindered by lots n lots of dust particles since the light ray becomes quite feeble by now it gets deflected from one particle to another an so on

thus what we see is flickering ( or twinkling) image of star.

Answer 8

sometimes you could actually be seeing a supernova explosion and thats why, because they last for weeks, but I'm pretty sure its just Earth's atmosphere getting in the way. Try looking closer with a telescope.