Why do Stars Twinkle | Animation?

Stars twinkle because the air between us and them is always moving, like when you're outside on a breezy day.

Imagine you're looking at a light from across a room, but there’s a fan blowing in front of it. The fan’s blades are making the air move around, so the light looks like it's shaking or waving. That’s kind of what happens with stars!

The air we breathe is not always still, it moves up and down, hot and cold. This moving air is called atmosphere. When a star's light travels through this moving atmosphere, the light gets bent or shifted, like when you look at something under water.

Sometimes the light comes straight to us; sometimes it bends a little, that’s why stars look like they're twinkling, just like a light that is shaking in the wind.

You can think of it like this: if you're holding a flashlight and shaking it while someone looks at it from far away, they would see the light flicker, just like stars do!