Why do stars twinkle?
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The atmosphere is a fluid, so it is always flowing around in random directions, like ripples in a pool.
When light passes through those different waves of light, it gets bent in different ways. Since it’s always changing, the path the light follows to get to you always changes. Thay is what we see as twinkling
Try putting your head underwater and looking up. You will notice that everything seems blobby and wavy. That is because the surface of the water bends the light, and ripples in the surface makes the light bend in weird ways.
The atmosphere does the same thing, but much less so. However, it is enough to make small points of light occasionally disappear as the ripples in the atmosphere bends all the starlight away from you.
Not the real reason, but the one in like to fantasize about.
All the dog spirits in the heavens are looking down at their old families. They wag their tails when they see us and this causes the stars to twinkle.
Reality is cool too.
Stars are so far away, they’re tiny beams of light when it gets to us, like a column of light narrower than a hair.. Constant air movement interrupts this super-narrow column of light a teensy bit, but it’s enough tho interrupt all the light in that thin column. This causes the twinkle. If the column of light is just a bit wider, like the planet Jupiter, it’s too wide for the moving air to interrupt all the light, so it doesn’t appear to twinkle.
This is called scintillating.
The stars are so far away it is as though the light comes from a single point in the sky. This makes any small perturbation in the light much more noticeable.
The atmosphere is constantly moving and changing pressure and humidity. This refracts (bends) the light at varying amounts so the star constantly looks like it is changing brightness.
Planets on the other hand, do not scintillate. This is because they are close enough to the earth that their light comes from an area in the sky rather than a single point. So if you ever see a bright star in the sky that isn’t twinkling then you instantly know it’s a planet. It’s cool being out at night and instantly being able to recognise Jupiter or Venus.
Atmosphere, distance, etc… But doesn’t the limitations of the **cones and rods in your eyes** ALSO contribute to this?
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