why or how do stars twinkle?

Question

when we look up at night, i notice that the stars twinkle, and give off colors like blue.

Answer 1

The twinkle effect is caused by the Earth's atmosphere.

High altitude winds and changes in air pressure make the image of the star appear to shimmer and twinkle.

That is one of the reasons why many observatories are built at the top of high mountains - where the atmosphere is thinner. The complete absence of atmosphere in space also gives the Hubble space telescope a huge advantage over earth based telescopes.

Answer 2

Such a simple question, and so MANY wrong answers!

Although some stars themselves vary in brightness, they do it on a much longer time scale. Twinkling is caused by the star's light passing through turbulence (not dust or pollution) in Earth's atmosphere. Planets don't twinkle because they have larger apparent diameters than stars, so are less affected by air turbulence.

Answer 3

The twinkling of stars are due to effect of our atmosphere. The air currents at different heights acts as different medium causing light to refract and that cause the twinkling. If you watch stars from space or moon,it wont twinkle

Answer 4

it's caused from a process called scintillation.
In space, the stars would appear as steady pinpoints. Turbulence in the atmosphere is largely responsible for the twinkling effect, so the steadier the atmosphere, the less the stars seem to twinkle and sparkle, and the more unsteady the atmosphere, the more the stars seem to twinkle and sparkle.
if you have any more questions i can do my best to answer them.

enjoy your midnight stars :)

Answer 5

20

Answer 6

They don't twinkle at all. The effect you see is atmospheric distortion caused by the air above you acting like a len. If you have ever seen distorted views of something by looking at that something across hot pavement, you have seen how heat waves can distortt something even so short-ranged as local images, that's the same effect.

Answer 7

*twinkle**twinkle* of course...how else do you twinkle?

In astronomy, luminosity is the amount of light, and other forms of radiant energy, a star radiates per unit of time. The luminosity of a star is determined by the radius and the surface temperature. However, many stars do not radiate a uniform flux—the amount of energy radiated per unit area—across their entire surface. The rapidly-rotating star Vega, for example, has a higher energy flux at its poles than along its equator.[89]

Surface patches with a lower temperature and luminosity than average are known as starspots. Small, dwarf stars such as the Sun generally have essentially featureless disks with only small starspots. Larger, giant stars have much bigger, much more obvious starspots,[90] and they also exhibit strong stellar limb darkening. That is, the brightness decreases towards the edge of the stellar disk.[91] Red dwarf flare stars such as UV Ceti may also possess prominent starspot features.[92]


The apparent brightness of a star is measured by its apparent magnitude, which is the brightness of a star with respect to the star’s luminosity, distance from Earth, and the altering of the star’s light as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. Intrinsic or absolute magnitude is what the apparent magnitude a star would be if the distance between the Earth and the star were 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years), and it is directly related to a star’s luminosity.

i would go with the former...it was a much cuter answer...and less true

Answer 8

they twinkle because of debris and dust in the Earth's atmosphere. Light refracts off these particles causing the twinkling

Answer 9

Because of the Earths atmosphere. They twinkle more when they are closer to the horizon. its called atmospheric turbulence

Answer 10

because they go through a lot of atmosphere. The ones more close to the horizon twinkle more, cuz they go thru more atmosphere.