why does star twinkle and the moon doesn't?

Question

why does star twinkle and the moon dosent? i would realy like to know. thanks

Answer 1

I don't know why people are making answers up. Here is an explanation:

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 2

The light from the moon (which of course is reflected sunlight) passes through the same atmosphere as the light from the stars. So the moon does twinkle but because the light from the moon is so many magnitudes brighter than the stars the twinkle is impossible to see with the naked eye. But take a look through a telescope and you can clearly see the moon "flutter". This is due to the same atmospheric effects that causes the twinkle of the stars.

Answer 3

Stars twinkle because of turbulence in the atmosphere of the Earth. As the atmosphere churns, the light from the star is refracted in different directions. This causes the star's image to change slightly in brightness and position, hence "twinkle." This is one of the reasons the Hubble telescope is so successful: in space, there is no atmosphere to make the stars twinkle, allowing a much better image to be obtained.


Planets do not twinkle the way stars do. In fact, this is a good way of figuring out if a particular object you see in the sky is a planet or a star. The reason is that stars are so far away that they are essentially points of light on the sky, while planets actually have finite size. The size of a planet on the sky in a sense "averages out" the turbulent effects of the atmosphere, presenting a relatively stable image to the eye.

Answer 4

maximum stars are pinpoint aspects of sunshine, or close to-pinpoints... So, while the ambience is energetic, the *source* of sunshine looks to shift very at present, starting to be the twinkling consequence. The moon, on the different hand, is an exceptionally great source of sunshine - given a similar atmospheric situations, the sunshine of one area of the moon could be shifted using air currents, yet mild from an adjoining area of the moon will fill interior the 'lacking' photons with it rather is very own. So...it won't twinkle. same tale of the better products interior the sky - Jupiter, Venus, Saturn... they are close sufficient to us that they are *larger* than element-aspects of sunshine - so that they do no longer twinkle the two.

Answer 5

A star is a point source of light. That is, the star has no "width". As atmospheric turbulence interferes with the transmission of this point of light toward your eye, the image comes and goes, causing twinkling.

The moon is a larger object, visually. It is 1/2 degree across in terms of the angular size. It also wobbles in the atmosphere, but doesn't appear to do so because the totality of its image is stable. If you focus on a very small feature of the moon at, say, 500 power of magnification, the image will come and go in terms of clarity--an analogous process to the twinkling of a point source.

Clear skies.

Answer 6

As the light of the stars moves through the earth's atmosphere, the light bends around. For a split second, it may bend slightly to one place, and quickly go back to how it was. This gives the star a twinkling appearance.

The reason planets, the moon, and the sun don't do this is because of their size. Even if the light bends slightly, all these objects are large enough that it isn't noticable. Thus, they don't twinkle.

(And to the science nuts, I know the light doesn't bend. It refracts. I was trying to keep the answer simple.)

Answer 7

The stars twinkle because their fainter light is partially difussed by the atmosphere making their light appear to oscillate. The light of moon is subject to the same effect. The effect however, being that the moons light (sunlight reflected off of its surface) is much brighter, is not perceptable to the naked eye.

It is however perceptable in most telescopes. Through a telescope the atmospheric effect can be seen to appear to undulate across the surface of the moon.

Answer 8

because the moon appears thousands of times larger in the night sky and it's light is evenly spread out.

every star's light (except the sun) is a tiny point of emitted light, easily distorted by earth's atmospheric disturbances, whereas the moon's reflected light is evenly distributed over a comparatively very wide area, and it's surface appearance is not so easily disturbed by the same atmospheric effects that make the stars APPEAR to twinkle. stars don't actually twinkle.

Answer 9

It has to do with the amount of light coming through our atmosphere, the stars light is very weak.
The source of the light is irrelevant, it's the intensity (and arcseconds in size, thanx guys). Airplane lights will also twinkle as will any regular light on earth seen from a great distance. The less strength, the more susceptible it is to atmospheric distortion.

Stars are meteors?? omg, if u don't know the the most basic facts about celestial bodies, y do you bother?

Spartan, the closeness of the object is also irrelevant as long as it is entirely out of our atmosphere.

Answer 10

I think I heard once that twinkling stars are actually binary star systems, meaning two suns that are really close together and spinning around each other, so you see its light twinkle because the two stars are moving.