• Question: Why do stars twinkle?

    Asked by flossieqb to Tim, Suzi, Simon, Rachael, Damien on 14 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by dalvindk.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @flossieqb and @dalvindk
      Thanks for this question. I’m afraid I had to look it up a bit.
      Stars are big balls of burning gas, like our sun. They are often very far away, and this means that they look very small to us. Some of the light gets absorbed by patches of particles as it passes through our atmosphere, and this makes it look like it twinkles.

      So our atmosphere is distorting the true light from the stars. That’s why the Hubble telescope is so useful, it is in space, so above our earth’s atmosphere, and therefore the light is not affected by the atmosphere.

      Hope this answered your question 🙂

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