What makes stars twinkle?
As poetic and mystical as we may find the twinkling of stars in the night sky, sadly, it is merely an illusion. To shed some light on the matter, we typed “why stars twinkle” into the Yahoo! search box and found a multitude of sites that explained the phenomenon. The twinkling of stars, technically known as stellar scintillation, is due to the very unromantic force known as atmospheric turbulence. Moving pockets of air in the Earth’s atmosphere distort the light from the stars. On his Bad Astronomy site, Phil Plait, our trusted reference for all astronomical inquiries, explains. These pockets of air act like lenses, refracting light in random directions and causing the stars to appear t
