The Flashing Star Why?

Have your attention, that the stars that we observe in the night appear to flash? Light change, such as lights flickering, and sometimes even the color change from white to blue or red and vice versa. Actual stars emit relatively constant energy / stable at any time. So the changes that occur do not come from bintangnya. There are other things that cause the stars appear to flash. What is that?

The cause is primarily because the earth has atmosphere. A large layer of air temperature with a different atmosphere in the air layers is sway, giving rise to turbulensi. Turbulensi this form, as waves or waves on the sea and swimming pool. So to get a picture as what is happening in the atmosphere, imagine a swimming pool surface is not calm.

A coin, which is still in the bottom of a swimming pool will look sway if we see from the top surface of the water. All this movement is due to refraksi / refraction. According to the science of physics, when the light passing through the medium of two different biasnya index, light will be dibiaskan / be deflected. For the case of a coin in a swimming pool, a coin dipantulkan the light passing through the medium of two different index biasnya, namely water and air, before falling in the eyes. And because the surface water that is not quiet, the position of the actual coins will still appear moved.

The same thing happened on the stars that light passing through the earth atmosphere. When entering the earth's atmosphere, light stars will be deflected by the air layer that sway. As a result, the position of stars will be moved. But due to a change in the position to detect very small eyes, then we will see it as a wink.

Then, how about the planet, the planet does not appear to flash? Stars, of any size and any sedekat distance, will appear as a point if the light observed from the earth, even with the best telescopes of the people. While the planet has a size much smaller than stars will appear larger because the distance from the earth that are far more closely. With only a small telescope will be able to see our planet as a disc, not as a point light. The size of this disk is big enough so that turbulensi the atmosphere does not provide a real light on the planet. View from the surface of the earth, the planet will not appear to flash. Except on the condition of the atmosphere turbulensinya very strong, or when the planet is located near the horizon, the planet will appear to flash as well. Because at the time the planet is located near the horizon (published shortly after or before the sinking), the light must go through a thicker atmosphere.

Once we know that the stars appear to flash it is the atmosphere the earth, we can adjust to the needs of us in the observation. If we want to observe stars with the least interference atmosphere, we can wait until the stars are near the meridian. Or if we want to see the stars do not blink at all, we can go to space, or month, or the planet that does not have the atmosphere (remember, do not have the atmosphere of days). Some want to prove yourself?