Written by Ananya Srivastava

Have you ever wondered, why stars twinkle?

Let’s learn about them – the Sun is a star!

To define it simply – stars are big balls of gases – and these are mainly hydrogen and helium. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun and it is so hot that it’s like an exploding hydrogen bomb.

So why do the stars twinkle?

So, the thing is that stars don’t really twinkle themselves. Yes, it’s true – that’s how it appears to us, but it’s all about the play of light. Our atmosphere has many layers and as the light from the stars passes through these layers, it bends.

Also, our layers are gases that are also moving, so as the light passes through these layers, it bends a lot and that’s what makes the stars look like they are twinkling.

The stars only twinkle due to our atmosphere and we know this because if you look at the stars from outside our atmosphere like the astronauts on the space station, they don’t see the stars twinkling at all! Also, this is why the stars that are closest to the Earth appear to glow the least.

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