Earth and Environment Atlas

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Phenomena

Twinkling

Meteorology

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Twinkling, also called scintillation, is a generic term for variations in the apparent brightness, colour, or position of a distant luminous object viewed through a medium. When the object lies outside Earth's atmosphere, as with stars and planets, the effect is called astronomical scintillation; for objects within the atmosphere it is called terrestrial scintillation. Atmospheric scintillation, defined as variation in illuminance only, is one of the three principal factors governing astronomical seeing.

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