Star Going Mental!

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I'm well aware of the tricks our eyes can play on us as humans & that
we're fooled very easily but there is a star up in the sky that is spitting off
white bits and changing colours extremely rapidly don't think it's just an
illusion or some ocular malfunction! It flickers red white and green & is
totally visible to the naked eye, even behind glass. I wonder could it be a
supernova or something? I'm asking because there could be an easy
explanation. I've heard the dust in the upper atmosphere can give the
illusion of activity but it seems too visible for that. This happened
once, over a year ago, I seen a similar thing in the sky over 2 nights in
a row. I wonder is there a name for this or some way to understand it.
Alas I don't even have binoculars but it's facing almost directly north. I
really really doubt it's the North star btw as I've seen that before & it
didn't look anything like this. Heavy clouds have just obscured it,
hence why I'm here, but I'd just like to know if I've been fooled by
something. Thanks

Edit: The sky completely cleared up and it became visible again. Now a lot
of other stars are visible with it but this one just outshines them all and still
bounces between red and green light. Can it really just be caused by photons
hitting off of electrons in the upper atmosphere or something (whatever the
correct thing is )?

Cú Giobach

The star you were looking at was probabaly Vega.

When the light from a star passes through the atmosphere, it passes through pockets of air at different temperatures and densities.
This refracts (bends) the light, like in a prism.

This "splits" the light into different colours.
Now, because this light is passing through very many of these "pockets" it is being refracted first one way then another many times a second,
this gives the effect of the star twinkling and changing colours.

Imagine looking directly at the coloured light from the prism above,
then shaking or vibrating the prism, you would see the light rapidly changing colour.

The lower in the sky a star is, the more atmosphere it passes through,
consequently the more twinkling and colour changing you see.
Also the brighter a star is, the more pronounced this effect.

Hope this helps.

CaptainSkidmark

yeah i see that the odd night also, i always was led to believe it was some kind of massive storm on the planet!