Why do stars flicker?

fosse4

OK, It's because of the interference of space debris between the transferrence of light from the distant object to it's reception on earth this can be caused by .........(yawn!) Aug 18 03, 3:46 PM

Baloo55th

Not only space debris - atmospheric dust interferes with faint light. That's why planets don't twinkle most of the time - stronger light (relatively). Aug 18 03, 4:30 PM

Gnomon

Stars flicker because they are so far away that their light appears to be coming from a single point in the sky. All the light is coming along a very narrow path to our eye, so it is easily affected by pockets of warm and cold air, being bent as it moves from one type of air to another. Planets don't tend to flicker as much as stars, even when they are not as bright, because they are much closer, so they appear as tiny discs rather than points. The light is thus coming to us along a few different paths and is not as affected by variations in the atmosphere. Aug 19 03, 2:21 AM

Austing10135

It's due to turbulence in the atmosphere. It's just like how things look wavy when you look over a hot grill in the summer, only on a smaller scale. An even better analogy is that looking at stars from inside our atmosphere is like birdwatching from the bottom of a swimming pool: the ripples distort the picture. That's one of the main reasons why space telescopes, like Hubble, provide such sharp pictures. In addition to contributing turbulence, the atmosphere also acts like a prism when you look at stars near the horizon. Since the star colors get split into a rainbow plus the turbulence makes the star move around, it can appear like the star is changing color. Quoted from "http://www.astro.wisk.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/faq.html" Aug 29 08, 9:16 PM