When we look at the night sky, we see luminous points that change brightness, that flicker.
But are the stars the ones who do that? The answer is in our atmosphere.
Its light passes through layers of air with different temperatures and densities, which continually divert its path. It’s like observing an object through hot air rising from the asphalt, or in the desert: its image seems to tremble.
So why do the planets barely blink?
Although they look like points, they are much closer and we receive light from different areas of them, and the alterations in some areas are compensated by those in others.
But stars, seen from space, actually, without our atmosphere, do not twinkle.
Elora Bain