How come stars twinkle but .....?

Question

How come stars twinkle but planets dont?

Answer 1

Planets are closer, and their light does not travel through as many layers of planetary dust, etc. as do those of stars, which are farther way.

Answer 2

Planets do twinkle. The twinkling isn't an effect of what produces the light, but rather disturbances in our atmosphere. You have to keep in mind that the light that reaches us has to come through approximately 50 miles of atmosphere - from the mesosphere with its super-thin air to the troposphere, near the Earth's surface. Temperature variations, humidity, particles - they all deflect light which creates the "twinkling". On the brighter planets, this is less noticeable because they direct more light towards us, but it still exists. Even the moon shimmers because of our atmosphere - less so when directly overhead, but when it's at an angle and its light passes through more air, the effect is quite noticeable.

Answer 3

There are a couple of reasons for this....

First and foremost, the distances from earth to the other planets are fantastically huge, but the distances to other stars are super duper freaking enormously fantastically huge... which means that the amount of light we receive from a star is small compared to the amount of light we receive from a planet. The fainter the light, the easier for atmospheric disturbances to distort the beam and create the "twinkle effect" that Richard talked about above.

Answer 4

The scientific name for the twinkling of stars is stellar scintillation (or astronomical scintillation). Stars twinkle when we see them from the Earth's surface because we are viewing them through thick layers of turbulent (moving) air in the Earth's atmosphere.
Stars (except for the Sun) appear as tiny dots in the sky; as their light travels through the many layers of the Earth's atmosphere, the light of the star is bent (refracted) many times and in random directions (light is bent when it hits a change in density - like a pocket of cold air or hot air). This random refraction results in the star winking out (it looks as though the star moves a bit, and our eye interprets this as twinkling).
Stars closer to the horizon appear to twinkle more than stars that are overhead - this is because the light of stars near the horizon has to travel through more air than the light of stars overhead and so is subject to more refraction. Also, planets do not usually twinkle, because they are so close to us; they appear big enough that the twinkling is not noticeable (except when the air is extremely turbulent).
Stars would not appear to twinkle if we viewed them from outer space (or from a planet/moon that didn't have an atmosphere).

Answer 5

the flux from a planet or star passes thro the earths atmosphere whose refractive index chages continuously.hence the relative position of the source changes continuously.

the star can be considered as a point object as it is many light years away but that is not the case with planets. the planets can be considered as a collection of such points.

In the case of stars the position changes continuously which is registered in the eye as twinkles.

The planets dont twinkle as changes in relative position occur within the boundaries of the planet

Answer 6

The Stars In the sky are the individual SUN's.
And these SUN's are so far from our planet..
So travelling and intermeeting of the air shows like blink..
So they twinkle.
But the planets so near to the earth and don't have the ability to produce the light.So they cant blink..

Answer 7

eyes of the only i admire , whilst she winks , whilst she squeeze her eyes to chortle. i've got self assurance like 2 stars are absent interior the sky simply by fact those 2 are at the back of her eye lashes, resting. i've got self assurance like she is watching me, and that i'm watching her back.

Answer 8

we cant say that bcoz its all gods creation u better pry to god to make the stars shine more brighter!!!!