In: Physics
Planets do not twinkle because |
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D. they are nearer to earth and hence we receive a greater amount of light and, therefore minor variations in the intensity are not noticeable
Further explanation,
The planets in our solar system, much smaller than stars, are
closer and can be resolved as disks with a little bit of
magnification (field binoculars, for example). Since the Earth's
atmosphere is turbulent, all images viewed up through it tend to
"swim." The result of this is that sometimes a single point in
object space gets mapped to two or more points in image space, and
also sometimes a single point in object space does not get mapped
into any point in image space. When a star's single point in object
space fails to map to at least one point in image space, the star
seems to disappear temporarily. This does not mean the star's light
is lost for that moment. It just means that it didn't get to your
eye, it went somewhere else.