Why stars twinkles at night

On the other hand, warm, hazy, humid nights strongly tend to have steady untwinkling stars. This is usually true. Their greater width gives them some immunity against having their whole image twisted by our air. Who would have guessed that a quick look upward can be so … scintillating? From the beautiful stars and planets to magical auroras and eclipses, he covers everything under the Sun and Moon!

Skip to main content. You are here This Week's Amazing Sky. Why Do Stars Twinkle at Night? By Bob Berman. June 6, About This Blog. Related Articles Astronomy Sky Stars. What do you want to read next?

Well, space is the best place to see a star without a twinkle. However, getting big telescopes into space is very hard. We can build big telescopes on the ground that use lasers and bendable mirrors - bending the mirrors to match the twinkling starlight. This then shows us the whole universe, as if the atmosphere vanished above us! Well, if you look at a star through even the biggest telescope, you still just see a tiny point of light. This light comes through the atmosphere in a tiny beam - that can be easily knocked around.

That means that the light from those planets comes through the atmosphere in a much thicker beam than that from a star - and that thicker beam is much harder to knock around.

Hello, curious kids! Ask an adult to send your question to us. They can:. Please tell us your name, age, and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. For more on this, read our guide to astronomical seeing. For more on this, read our guide on how to find planets in the night sky. He fell in love with the night sky when he caught his first glimpse of Orion, aged Home Science Why do stars twinkle?

Some stars appear to flicker between different colours as their light is distorted by our atmosphere, as this composite image of Rigel, Betelgeuse and Sirius shows. Here, the differences in colour are picked up by a DSLR camera. Credit: Amanda Cross.