Why does canopus twinkle

Gisele Mouta Professional. Do stars move? The stars move along with fantastic speeds, but they are so far away that it takes a long time for their motion to be visible to us.

You can understand this by moving your finger in front of your eyes. Even when you move it very slowly, it may appear to move faster than a speeding jet that is many miles away. Lucinia Valitov Professional. How far away are stars? The closest star , Proxima Centauri, is 4. A light-year is 9. That is an incredibly large distance.

What is twinkling of star? Stars twinkle because of turbulence in the atmosphere of the Earth. As the atmosphere churns, the light from the star is refracted in different directions. This causes the star's image to change slightly in brightness and position, hence " twinkle. Harry Henig Explainer.

What does a shooting star mean? A shooting star is really a small piece of rock or dust that hits Earth's atmosphere from space. It moves so fast that it heats up and glows as it moves through the atmosphere.

Shooting stars are actually what astronomers call meteors. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere before they reach the ground. Enguia Batukov Explainer. Why are there no green stars? There are no truly green stars , because the color of a star is more or less given by a black-body spectrum and this never looks green. However, there are a few stars that appear green to some observers. This is usually because of the optical illusion that a red object can make nearby objects look greenish.

Lizardo Rebordosa Pundit. Can we see stars in Andromeda? Let its largest star cloud, NGC , show you the way. The Hubble Space Telescope easily resolves millions of individual stars in an outer region of the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M Hommad Amir Pundit. What are stars made of? Stars are made of very hot gas. This gas is mostly hydrogen and helium, which are the two lightest elements. Stars shine by burning hydrogen into helium in their cores, and later in their lives create heavier elements.

Neyva Zumwinkel Pundit. Also this would have to change extremely rapidly, which simply does not occur for our average night-sky stars or most other objects, for that matter Using a star chart and based on your location, direction of observation, and time of observation, I'd guess you were seeing the star Capella.

Capella is quite a striking star because it's actually four stars. There are two sets of binary pairs that are almost exactly along the same line of sight such that the light from the four stars together co-mingles and from Earth looks like a single star. Interestingly, the different stars have different colors, meaning that as you stare at it, it can appear white, red, or blue, just as you described.

Note that the human eye cannot observe redshift and blueshift like you describe. The fact that the star twinkled more than those higher up is due to the atmosphere itself. The closer to the horizon a star is, the more it will twinkle due to the starlight passing through more atmosphere before reaching you. Look on U tube thier are people all over the world seeing the same thing. If u watch those for long enough they will drop every 3 hours approximately.

And in most cases especially mine thier is heavy drone activity when these are present. I have really good footage of a lot of this stuff as I bought good camera equipment to gather evidence. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What is this rapidly twinkling red, blue, and white star I saw?

Ask Question. Asked 4 years ago. Active 2 years, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. What was I seeing? Improve this question. Gogeta70 Gogeta70 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 5 5 bronze badges. Betelgeuse is, however, much bigger and brighter. The stars twinkle in the night sky because of the effects of our atmosphere. When starlight enters our atmosphere it is affected by winds in the atmosphere and by areas with different temperatures and densities.

This causes the light from the star to twinkle when seen from the ground. To search for Canopus , choose a clear night and a location with an unobstructed view of the southern horizon. Then, using the Great Winter Triangle and Sirius in the constellation Canis Major as guides, look down from Sirius towards the southern horizon to find Canopus appearing on the horizon.

Rigel Kentaurus. The luminosity makes it the second-brightest star in the night sky despite its distance from Earth. One estimate says that if Canopus were placed in the location of Sirius the brightest star, which is 8. Stars Appear Pointy Thanks to Diffraction.

Its proper name is generally considered to originate from the mythological Canopus, who was a navigator for Menelaus, king of Sparta. It is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major. With a size of solar radii, 3, light-years from Earth is the largest known star.

Just for information, VY CMa is biggest star but it is not brightest as seen from earth. Although Canopus appears significantly less bright than Sirius , it is really much brighter, blazing with the brilliance of 14, suns! With non-visible forms of light energy factored in, it surpasses the sun by more than 15, times.