JAKARTA – When we stare at the stars we will see the twinkling stars . So why is that so? Here is the full explanation, launched from Space, Tuesday (5/7/2022).
In fact, the stars are not actually twinkling as we see them. The light of the star is actually intact, it’s just that we see it from Earth which is very far from the star itself.
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Ryan French, a solar physicist at University College London in the UK, says that stars travel enormous distances to reach our eyes at night.
The sun alone is our closest star 150 million kilometers away, the other star closest to us is Proxima Centauri, which is more than 4 light years from Earth.
With a long distance, on the way to our eyes the light from these stars will certainly be faint, especially when the starlight meets the Earth’s atmosphere, so what we see is a twinkle.
“When this point of light reaches the atmosphere, it passes through a layer of vibrating air before it reaches our eyes, causing it to twinkle,” French explains.
So, the distance between the stars and the vibrations of the Earth’s atmosphere are what make the stars in the sky appear twinkling. In outer space, far away, the stars don’t twinkle at all.
This is one of the reasons why the Hubble Space Telescope was sent into orbit. The telescope was able to obtain sharper images of space without the images being distorted by atmospheric turbulence.
“Stars will twinkle more if their light passes through more air before reaching our eyes. A humid night will also cause the air to become thicker, making the stars appear more twinkling,” explains French.
So what if we see a star that does not twinkle? French said it wasn’t a star, it was a planet. Unlike stars, planets are not point sources in the sky.
This is because they are much closer to us. In other words, they are too big in l it annoys me to make the atmosphere seem twinkling,” concluded French
(wbs)
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