Why do stars twinkle?

jackiebaron

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Um...how can I put this politely...the correct answer is earlier in the thread

Venus doesn't twinkle at sunset. Why would the distance that the light travels have a bearing upon how the atmosphere interferes with that light?

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

That's not semi-interesting, it's fascinating. The fact that you can actually pop outside today and look through a telescope at what a distant galaxy looked like a billion years ago....:eek:

A photograph of the universe looking back approx 13 billion years into our universe's past.
http://walkaboutblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/hubble_ultra_deep_field1.jpg

Every spec of light you see is an entire galaxy containing more than a billion stars.

FreudianSlippers

jackiebaron wrote: »

Venus doesn't twinkle at sunset. Why would the distance that the light travels have a bearing upon how the atmosphere interferes with that light?

It's not just distance, it's light source.

A star is a single light source, whereas light from a planet is already a reflection there are multiple sources of light from the same "dot"

Monty Burnz

af_thefragile wrote: »

A photograph of the universe looking back approx 13 billion years into our universe's past.
http://walkaboutblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/hubble_ultra_deep_field1.jpg

Every spec of light you see is an entire galaxy containing more than a billion stars.

If you could get every fundamenalist religious person, and every power-hungry materialist to look at that picture and understand its implications, you'd have world peace at a stroke.

fontanalis

Svetti Arss wrote: »

If that's the case then why doesn't the Moon twinkle?

Somethign to do with it reflecting the suns light.

Monty Burnz

fontanalis wrote: »

Somethign to do with it reflecting the suns light.

It actually does 'twinkle' - if you look at it through a powerful telescope, you will see the surface details shimmer and wiggle around now and then due to the same atmospheric effects that cause stars to twinkle. It's just a lot easier to see in stars because they are a point light source.

fontanalis

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It actually does 'twinkle' - if you look at it through a powerful telescope, you will see the surface details shimmer and wiggle around now and then due to the same atmospheric effects that cause stars to twinkle. It's just a lot easier to see in stars because they are a point light source.

It's twinkle, twinkle littler star, not twinle, twinkle little moon. Are you disagreeing with a classic nursery rhyme?

tommyhaas

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It actually does 'twinkle' - if you look at it through a powerful telescope,

Is that an iphone app?

lil_lisa

You're all wrong. You see, stars are born and in order for them to be acknowledged as grown up stars, they must learn the ability to twinkle. They spend all their hours and days as baby stars doing good deeds and being happy so that one day they will learn and be able to twinkle. They twinkle because it is their destiny. There are actually a few competitions I believe for the most twinkliest star!

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

If you could get every fundamenalist religious person, and every power-hungry materialist to look at that picture and understand its implications, you'd have world peace at a stroke.

Surprisingly that imagine only increases my awe towards the creator who set it all in motion in the first place. It is almost spiritually enlightening! All of our collective worth and understanding not even an atoms worth compared to the scale and design of the universe. We must be utter and absolute fools when we say we know the secrets of the universe!!

For the materialists, it should give them a perspective of how fragile our planet is when looked along with the constant chaos present everywhere.
http://multimedia4everyone.com/faith_science_commentary/media/photo_earth-from-space.jpg
http://www.creationoutreach.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/earth-from-space-western.jpg

The fuzzy haze that outlines the planet is all we have of our atmosphere. Its that fuzzy haze which sustains all life on the blue marble floating along the empty darkness of space...

I particularly like the first pic. It looks so calm and serene from afar... Yet the close you get to the surface, the serenity crumbles down into a static discord of chaos, violence and destruction...

Red Hand

lil_lisa wrote: »

You're all wrong. You see, stars are born and in order for them to be acknowledged as grown up stars, they must learn the ability to twinkle. They spend all their hours and days as baby stars doing good deeds and being happy so that one day they will learn and be able to twinkle. They twinkle because it is their destiny. There are actually a few competitions I believe for the most twinkliest star!

Here is an annual winner!

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSbKhNRGNAkvFRaigY1Nm5LAphKDS0A381AJSGR9Bk40_TYfqaJ

fontanalis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

af_thefragile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYaJCmJgb9A

jackiebaron

OisinT wrote: »

It's not just distance, it's light source.

A star is a single light source, whereas light from a planet is already a reflection there are multiple sources of light from the same "dot"

That's what I said. Stars provide an undullating light source whereas planet are just relectors.

ejmaztec

lil_lisa wrote: »

You're all wrong. You see, stars are born and in order for them to be acknowledged as grown up stars, they must learn the ability to twinkle. They spend all their hours and days as baby stars doing good deeds and being happy so that one day they will learn and be able to twinkle. They twinkle because it is their destiny. There are actually a few competitions I believe for the most twinkliest star!

I think that could be a very long-winded way of you telling us that, on the subject of twinkling stars, you were off sick on the day the subject came up.

Monty Burnz

jackiebaron wrote: »

That's what I said. Stars provide an undullating light source whereas planet are just relectors.

Um..they don't. You're wrong on this one. Some stars do fluctuate in their light output, but over the course of decades or centuries or longer, not seconds.

Canis Lupus

af_thefragile wrote: »

Surprisingly that imagine only increases my awe towards the creator who set it all in motion in the first place. It is almost spiritually enlightening!

Which creator are you referring to?

whatsamsn

Monty Burnz wrote: »

That's not semi-interesting, it's fascinating. The fact that you can actually pop outside today and look through a telescope at what a distant galaxy looked like a billion years ago....:eek:

I dont know much about the subject of stars but surely looking at a star with the naked eye .... then with a telescope would give me the same aged view of the star? (Since it would take the same amount of lightyears to reach either right?)

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Um..they don't. You're wrong on this one. Some stars do fluctuate in their light output, but over the course of decades or centuries or longer, not seconds.

Variable Star's do fluctuate very regularly and some very fast...

Regularly... that's such a funny word to say out loud...!!

Gummy Panda

Only Beth Gaga Shaggy knows the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ccN_5HGgeo

Monty Burnz

af_thefragile wrote: »

Variable Star's do fluctuate very regularly and some very fast...

Regularly... that's such a funny word to say out loud...!!

Here are all the known variable stars - link. The shortest period (brightest to darkest) is over a day. God bless your eyes if you can see that twinkle!

af_thefragile

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Which creator are you referring to?

The intelligence setting out the initial sound causing the universe to explode into existence out of nothingness. Then setting about laws and forces which maintain the system in the delicate balance it is in. The architect, the watchmaker, the designer of everything we sense around us. Everything is build to a perfect measure, a perfect balance. Right from the smallest of quarks upto the largest of galactic superclusters. The more we learn about this system, the only more do we find out about the complexity of the system and the more mysterious it gets, the more awe inspiring it gets.

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Here are all the known variable stars - link. The shortest period (brightest to darkest) is over a day. God bless your eyes if you can see that twinkle!

What bout these guys.

Yes semantically speaking they're not variable stars. Yet still they're stars of varying magnitude.

And although most have variable periods of few months to years, they're not decades and centuries either...

Monty Burnz

af_thefragile wrote: »

What bout these guys.

Yes semantically speaking they're not variable stars. Yet still they're stars of varying magnitude.

Yeah, I ruled out discussing pulsars and quasars and such because it doesn't explain why stars twinkle.

Red Hand

af_thefragile wrote: »

The intelligence setting out the initial sound causing the universe to explode into existence out of nothingness. Then setting about laws and forces which maintain the system in the delicate balance it is in. The architect, the watchmaker, the designer of everything we sense around us. Everything is build to a perfect measure, a perfect balance. Right from the smallest of quarks upto the largest of galactic superclusters. The more we learn about this system, the only more do we find out about the complexity of the system and the more mysterious it gets, the more awe inspiring it gets.

No.

tommyhaas

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Only Beth Gaga Shaggy knows the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ccN_5HGgeo

It dosent bother me that you're from Iran

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Yeah, I ruled out discussing pulsars and quasars and such because it doesn't explain why stars twinkle.

Well, twinkling is a phenomenon caused due to the earth's atmosphere. Not much to do with stars at all though...

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

No.

You can hold your position, I'll hold mine.

Monty Burnz

af_thefragile wrote: »

Well, twinkling is a phenomenon caused due to the earth's atmosphere. Not much to do with stars at all though...

Except that they are what you are observing twinkling...:D

af_thefragile

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Except that they are what you are observing twinkling...:D

Yet once outside the earth's atmosphere, the 'twinkling' phenomenon ceases to exist. Hence one could say twinkling is a solely an atmospheric phenomenon of earth.

If a star falls in space and there's no one around...

CrazyRabbit

I know what wikipedia says, but I'm pretty sure that the government is somehow at fault.