Why stars are appeared to be twinkling at night?

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Debraj Paul

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The twinkling of stars in our night sky is down to the Earth's atmosphere. As light from the stars travels towards Earth it can easily move in a straight line, but once it starts travelling through the Earth's atmosphere it gets bounced around in different directions by the particles in the air.
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English Expert

Stars twinkle because … they’re so far away from Earth that, even through large telescopes, they appear only as pinpoints. And it’s easy for Earth’s atmosphere to disturb the pinpoint light of a star. As a star’s light pierces our atmosphere, each single stream of starlight is refracted -- caused to...
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Stars twinkle because … they’re so far away from Earth that, even through large telescopes, they appear only as pinpoints. And it’s easy for Earth’s atmosphere to disturb the pinpoint light of a star. As a star’s light pierces our atmosphere, each single stream of starlight is refracted – caused to change direction, slightly – by the various temperature and density layers in Earth’s atmosphere. You might think of it as the light traveling a zig-zag path to our eyes, instead of the straight path the light would travel if Earth didn’t have an atmosphere. Planets shine more steadily because … they’re closer to Earth and so appear not as pinpoints, but as tiny disks in our sky. You’d could see planets as disks if you looked through a telescope, while stars would remain pinpoints. The light from these little disks is also refracted by Earth’s atmosphere, as it travels toward our eyes. But – while the light from one edge of a planet’s disk might be forced to “zig” one way – light from the opposite edge of the disk might be “zagging” in an opposite way. The zigs and zags of light from a planetary disk cancel each other out, and that’s why planets appear to shine steadily. read less
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Experienced Mathematics com ECE Educator

Since there are many layers air medium with different permittivities, light travelling through different layers get refracted and seems to be twinkling at night.
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revival

Refraction of light coming from the stars is the reason: As light enters into our environment, there are many layers of environment in which density of air varies due to this refraction occurs which led to twinkling of stars
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high school tutor, sketch artist

due to refraction of light that travels through different mediums before reaching to our eyes
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NEET Coaching

Due to refraction of light
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Simplified Maths and Science

Because the light from the stars travel through multiple medium, and refracts every time it passes from one to other, which changes the angle of the travel, giving a twinkling effect.
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PM Classes

due to many layers of gases into atmosphere
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Physics Subject Expert

The stars are appeared to be twinkling because of atmospheric refraction. When light from the stars enter into the atmosphere it refracts multiple times due to the various layers of atmosphere which has variable optical density for each layer.
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Concept Guru

as the light from enters in the atmosphere of earth , it undergoes continuous refraction because of different layers of gases of with varying densities
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