Why do stars twinkle

Star wheels will help you find your way among the twinkling constellations, and you can trace the appearance of the planets along the ecliptic with a Skygazer's Almanac. I had a random thought, maybe someone out there has a better idea. Another reason stars twinkle might be because of objects traveling in the lights path. With this sort of occurance happening randomly every minute, every second.

We could possibly looking at a very busy space, instead of the predictable space we know now. Log in to Reply. Interesting line of thought. It was proposed that stellar scintillation, could be due to the turbulence in the Oort cloud, the great envelope of debris and pristine stellar mass surrounding the solar system.

This could very conveniently also explain why planets, moon, satellite do not scintillate. Because they are within the Oort cloud! Now, it would be very easy to verify this, right? We just have to ask the astronauts! We did. Community Leaders: Notable Astronomers. At our Earthbound observatories, we are learning how to compensate for the twinkling effect by adapting the optics of our large telescopes as fast as it occurs.

As a result, we should soon be able to produce much sharper images from here on the ground. Answer originally posted on August 5, Sign up for our email newsletter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. John A. 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. As incoming cold fronts replace warmer air, they create convection currents that can cause seeing conditions to rapidly deteriorate.