Quote:
Originally Posted by zorgon
No laughing...
The twinkling effect is caused by atmospheric conditions... bright object like Venus or Sirius low to the horizon go through more atmosphere for the light to reach your eye so less twinkle.
Look at how large and orange the moon appears at moon rise or set... Partly due to paralax but also the denser air
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hmmmm, this answer was profoundly difficult for me to understand so rather than relying on my brilliant colleagues to spoon feed my lazy slovenly self i took the initiative of researching myself so that perhaps i could better understand my colleagues answers to my silly little questions.
As it turns out zorgon wins the cookie with his correct response that the twinkling effect is caused by atmospheric conditions. unfortunately for zorgon, he will receive only 1/2 of his tasty chocolate chip cookie because he suggests that when light goes through more atmosphere it twinkles less. this is in fact wrong. when light travels through more atmosphere it twinkles more, ie objects close to the horizon twinkle more than objects overhead as the light from objects proximate to the horizon obviously travel through more atmosphere to reach your retina. i found a quadrillion websites confirming this and i will simply quote one of many and you can investigate it further if you care too...
"The light would take a longer path through the atmosphere to the observer. That would mean that the light would pass through more disturbed air, making all the twinkling effects even more pronounced. So, stars near the horizon twinkle far more than stars that are nearly overhead."
http://astroprofspage.com/archives/1168
thank you zorgon for at least attempting to address my question.
stars twinkle and in general planets do not because stars are so far away that they are essentially points of light from oblivion. this light source is easily messed with by the atmosphere, as pointed out by zorgon, and messed with even more if the atmosphere is very turbulent. this messing with on behalf of the atmosphere makes the light from distant stars appear to twinkle. planets on the other hand can be considered not just a tiny pinpoint of light from oblivion but rather a disc of light made up of many points of light albeit closer to home. there is power in numbers and so the 'disc' of the planets light is not so easily distorted by our atmosphere and so planets do not appear to twinkle. under extreme atmospheric turbulence however the edges of even the moon for instance can appear to flicker a little.
should anyone want to verify this rather mundane subject i will provide one link of quadrillions covering this subject.
http://astroprofspage.com/archives/1168
so all off my jabbering brings me back to a simple question as yet unanswered. if the object of light in the sky referred to in the ewetube video is indeed sirius then why does it not twinkle?
furthermore i have seen this same thing in the sky and apparently many others have too. again it is not twinkling and appears too large to be a star. so... what is it?