Sirius: flickering star ?

[wenskir]

Before I started to think about my scope again and came here, I saw a flickering star. When I ask my mom to look at it and to say I wasn't crazy, she said I was because she didn't saw it flickering. Yesterday I paid attention to it again. I asked my mom to look at it again and this time she saw it flickering. When I looked it up in Stellarium, it looked like Sirius and I just checked it again and I'm pretty sure it is.

Do more people see Sirius and is it really a flickering star ?

[Scooot]

It's just because you're looking at it through a lot of our atmosphere. The nearer to the horizon it is the more likely it is to be twinkling.

[davefrance]

Richard is spot on

[Tinker1947]

You will sometime see the dance about, there really appear to move back and forth.....just amount of air your looking through ......

[wenskir]

I wasn't really thinking that it would really be a twinkling star, but was more like 'please don't tell me me and my eyes are crazy'

So thanks ! It's really funny that I'm starting to regocnize names with dots in the sky !

[Langy]

Yes I noticed that early on too being new to this hobby. Someone did say that depending on how it is reacting (may be colour or something) is how good the seeing conditions are.

I'm sure someone will elaborate on that a bit more.

[wenskir]

No I get it a little, that it also depends on how the air is up there at that moment

I'm still gonna try to take a look at Sirius in the future, it's not the only one I see twinkling, but I haven't figure out yet which one that might be

[ronin]

The other one that "twinkles" a lot is Capella.

As information the less twinkling the better the sky is for seeing - less turbulance going on up there.

[Scooot]

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/twinkle.shtml

Here's a link