why a star appears as 5 rayed rather than a sphere like sun with naked eyes?

Answer 1

well actually the solution is pretty simple.

Light travels with a Velocity(Magnitude and direction remember?) which depends on the density of the medium in which it's traveling.

Now the atmosphere does NOT have a constant density.So the light rays from stars change their direction constantly when they travel through the atmosphere. Thats what makes the star appear what you call "5 rayed"(Actually it need not be 5 exactly).

Now for bigger objects like the Sun, the change in direction of the light waves is not significant enough to be noticed.

To confirm this answer just take a look at star photographs taken from outer space. they will seem much more rounder!!!

Answer 2

Take the sun, the one you see as a sphere and put it 10 light-years away and look at it again. It will look now like the 5 rayed objects that you described but nothing has changed on the sun itself. The only difference is the distance between the sun and us, but how the distance affects it? The change is caused by the space between the star and us and by what is filling this space. Light from stars gets scattered and dispersed by the dust and/or particles that the light encounters on its way to your eyes. It is similar as when you look at a street lamp on a misty night. The light from the street lamp looks very different to what it looks if it were a clear night. The distribution (concentration or average density) of the dispersing dust/matter filling the space between you and the star (the sun in our example) changes continually and that in turn causes different effects to the light traveling through it and instead of seeing a small circle you see the rays coming out of a central point.

Answer 3

Light is ejected out of a source radially in all direction at the same time.
Light rays move in perfect straight lines as a particle micromass sequences at particular frequencies of motion.. Because stars are much further away than the distance from the Sun, and because of the atmospnere on earth star light appears scattered.We are not able to see a Star as a perfectly defined sphere.

Answer 4

Not sure, but possible reason may be that it is not an object we usually focus on.
If u try to look at a street lamp, and try changing the way you look at it, by adjusting your eyes, you can sometimes notice light rays protruding out of the lamp. This happens when our eyes are not actually focusing on the lamp.
Stars being many light years away, are really far and our eyes may not be focusing on them. That is why we can see light protruding out of them.

Not at all sure about the 5 rays bundling up.
I have not seen 5 rays with my own eyes. It appears to be spiked but i cannot make out 5 rayed.Maybe it is imagination because we draw a star with 5 spikes.

Answer 5

I don't see stars as 5 rayed; I see them as tiny points of light. If you are seeing rays around them, then it is probably a problem with your eyes, such as astigmatism. All the stars (except the Sun) are so far away that we can only see them as points. Some telescopes add rays because of diffraction, but there are always four rays, never 5.