Do Planets Twinkle Like Stars Do?


Even in high-resolution telescopes, stars look like simple dots that glow due to refraction as they pass through Earth’s atmosphere.

Planets may twinkle like stars, but they are unlikely to do so. Stars twinkle because their light is slightly distorted and because their luminosity varies over time. Planets do not produce their own light, so this variation does not occur within them, and they can only reflect it from a star.

In other words, stars appear so small (due to their distance from us) that due to atmospheric refraction, they appear in more than one place, which in turn makes them appear twinkling. The stars are so far away that they appear to be tiny points of light, making the turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere much easier to distort that single beam.

This turbulence in the air makes a distant light source look like planets and twinkling stars. Most of the light reflected by the planets is not affected by the Earth’s atmosphere as much as the light from distant stars.

How Plants Appear Brighter

A planet/star will appear brighter when it refracts more light, and dim when it refracts less light. Note that planets are closer to us than stars, so they appear to be more than just points of light. The planets are also closer to Earth than the nearest star, so the planets appear larger in comparison.

Although the planets do not twinkle, or do not twinkle as much as the stars… Planets do not twinkle because they appear larger than the fixed stars, as they are relatively closer to the Earth. It seems that the planets barely noticeably glow due to this phenomenon of the same phenomenon as the twinkling of stars.

The planets seem to glow on a subtle level because even the distance from planet to planet is enough to block light as it enters the atmosphere. The stars’ smaller light beam is more noticeably curved in the atmosphere, causing it to flicker, while the planet’s light beam does not appear to be moving at all.

On the other hand, stars are point-sized objects that emit light due to atmospheric refraction of light. On the other hand, stars are so far away that we can only see them as tiny points of light. Various stars shine mainly because they are light-years away from Earth (outside the solar system), and their light reaches our eyes through various layers of gas and cavities in the atmosphere.

Stars Have Light. Planets Lack It.

The stars have their own light and shine in the night, but the planet has no light of its own. The stars seem to shine for us on Earth because our planets’ atmospheres contain wind, temperature fluctuations, and density fluctuations. Stars appear to glow because as light from these stars passes through our atmosphere, it is bent and distorted due to changes in air temperature and density.

When light from a star enters our atmosphere, each individual stream of starlight is refracted (caused by a slight change in direction) by the different layers of temperature and density in our atmosphere. This means that even with a super telescope, the influence of the temperature and density of the Earth’s atmosphere refracts the light emitted by the stars and makes the stars shine.

While you can look out at night and see flashes of different levels of light coming from the same star, what you’re actually seeing is atmospheric interference that makes the stars look like they’re glowing when they aren’t.

Interestingly, the planets to the naked eye (that is, planets that can only be seen with the eyes, without a telescope) look like stars in the sky, but they do not seem to glow at all. If you look at the stars at night, the stars may appear to twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, or twinkle. If one is standing on the planets surrounding these distant stars, they may have noticed the sun.

When you look at the night sky, you see stars, planets, shooting stars, and other celestial objects through the invisible veil that covers the Earth’s atmosphere. When light from a distant star passes through the atmosphere of our planets, the light spreads and bends.

Twinkling and Its Appeal to Stargazers

Twinkling is the main reason why many people around the world enjoy stargazing, and this can be explained by understanding the nature of the light emitted by stars as compared to the light of planets. While light from stars and other astronomical objects is likely to glow, the spark does not usually cause noticeable flicker in planetary images.

Star twinkling is usually negligible for planets because the multiple beams of light we receive from their disks tend to cancel out the effect. From our point of view, the light of a star appears in one place, and after milliseconds is distorted in another place.

Your eyes may fixate on a point of light from a particular star, and then, in a fraction of a second, it may appear to be somewhere else. Some stars twinkle in different colors as their light is distorted by our atmosphere, as shown in this composite image of Rigel, Betelgeuse and Sirius. This means that the light of the planets to the naked eye comes from a much closer distance and with a much larger radius than the light of the stars themselves and therefore it is much more difficult to bend and distort it.

Whether you’re looking at the planets or the stars there (and whether you can tell the difference between the two), I highly recommend taking these trips from time to time to get away from the city lights and let the darkness envelop you.

Nicholas Finn

I've been the captain of a fishing boat for over 20 years, and I created Pirateering to share my knowledge of and interest in seafaring.

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