Question

Why doesn't the planets Twinkle while the stars does?

Answer 1

The stars are far away from earth than the planets . planets are closer to Earth and so appear not as pinpoints, but as tiny disks in our sky. You’d could see planets as disks if you looked through a telescope, while stars would remain pinpoints. The light from these little disks is also refracted by Earth’s atmosphere, as it travels toward our eyes. But – while the light from one edge of a planet’s disk might be forced to “zig” one way – light from the opposite edge of the disk might be “zagging” in an opposite way. The zigs and zags of light from a planetary disk cancel each other out, and that’s why planets appear to shine steadily.