• Question: Why do stars sparkle?

    Asked by anon-267489 on 26 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Andreas Korn

      Andreas Korn answered on 26 Nov 2020:

      Stars sparkle because we observe them through our atmosphere. The clouds, vapour and small changes in the lights passing through make it appear that they sparkle. There are some stars that do really pulsate though, they change size.

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 26 Nov 2020:

      A lot of big telescopes now have “adaptive optics”, which are machines to remove the twinkle from stars and make clearer images without going into space. They do this by shining lasers into the sky, seeing how much twinkle there is from the laser pattern, and correcting for that.

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