How Does Reason behind flickering of stars in the night sky Work?

Stars flicker in the night sky because light from faraway stars has to travel through air that's not always still.

Imagine you're trying to see a friend who is jumping rope on a bumpy road. Sometimes the road is smooth, and you can clearly see them jumping. But when the road gets bumpy, their movements look wobbly or shaky, even though they're just jumping normally. That’s like what happens with stars!

The air we breathe isn’t always the same, sometimes it has layers that are warmer or colder, and these layers move around a bit. When starlight passes through them, those moving air layers make the light bend in different ways, just like how light bends when you look at a straw in a glass of water.

So the star’s light reaches us with little wiggles and shifts, it looks like the star is flickering, twinkling, or even dancing!

Sometimes the air is still enough that the star seems to be shining steady. But most of the time, it's like a fun game, the stars are playing hide-and-seek with us through the sky!