The starry night sky always causes special feelings, often all earthly affairs become unimportant, and a person begins to feel like a small part of a huge Universe, a part of something bigger than just planet Earth.
Why do the stars flicker? Probably many asked themselves this question. An incredibly beautiful sight, especially after the rain, when the stars shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow. People do not always know what to answer to this seemingly childish question.
A simple answer to a simple question
Star flicker is caused directly by air vibrations. Due to the heterogeneity of the Earth’s atmosphere, the air masses move at an unequal speed, while real currents and flows are formed, different in temperature properties, density and other parameters. Therefore, starlight passing through the atmosphere can be refracted in a variety of ways. So there is a semblance of this mysterious flicker.
Flickering star
A flickering star in the sky is like a spark of a big city, if you look at it from afar. And if at the same time the air is saturated with moisture, then the glow will change its path and refract, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. The answer to the question of why the stars twinkle turns out to be so simple. When the star begins to approach the horizon, the refraction is even more intense due to the thickness of the air, thereby making the flicker more distinct.
Can planets flicker?
Stars differ from planets in a huge number of physical characteristics, it is not surprising that these inhabitants of space shine in different ways. Even on a beautiful night with many twinkling stars, one can clearly distinguish the light emanating from the planets of the solar system. Their light can be described as smooth, constant. Like the moon or the sun, they do not flicker. This can be seen even without an ultra-precise microscope.
Why it happens? If we take into account the factors that the light of the stars, like the light of the planet, should be refracted in the layers of the atmosphere, we can conclude that the stars flicker pointwise, the planet does the same, but due to the fact that it has a lot of such points, the illusion of an even Sveta. It's all about quantity.
So different stars
If you look at the stars with the naked eye, then they all seem almost the same, different only in brightness. But this is far from the case, if you look closely, you can distinguish stars even in color. This applies to the largest and brightest stars. For example, the stars Arcturus and Aldebaran are orange, and Betelgeuse and Antares are red. White is called Sirius and Vega, white with a blue tint - Spica and Regulus. There are even yellow giants Capella and Alpha Centauri.
Astronomers associate the color of stars with a parameter such as temperature. Relatively cold are considered red stars with a surface temperature of up to 4 thousand degrees, the hottest called white-blue, reaching an incredible temperature of 10-30 thousand degrees Celsius! It becomes quite clear why the stars flicker, with such temperature data they are capable of much.
Why do stars flicker and do they flicker at all? The answer to this question depends on how you look at it. If this process is identified with refraction, then it can be called flicker. But, as you know, the stars themselves do not shine, just such an impression is formed by the viewer who watches this interesting phenomenon from the Earth. If you contemplate this picture from space, then there will be no flicker. According to the astronauts, the stars shine brightly, evenly, and they only wink at those observers who have remained on Earth.