Why light at long distance looks flickering?

Answer 1

Lights blinking at a distance is due to the atmosphere. They appear to twinkle actually vs blinking on a periodic basis. What happens is that over long distances, enough water vapor and other opaque gases get into your line of sight (between you and the light source). However, due to wind currents, the vapor and gases that block your vision are constantly moving. Hence, the light is blocked/unblocked/blocked as the gases and vapor in your line of sight keep moving.

Answer 2

The air in the atmosphere causes light to flicker.

Its called atmospheric distortion. Its why the sun and moon are larger, the closer they are to the horizon. Its why lights and stars flicker. The reason behind this is because in the atmosphere, there are pockets or air, laden with moisture. These pockets act to magnify and distort light as it passes through, thus flickering the image. Hooweestik.

Answer 3

Although light travels in a straight line, city lights can appear to "flicker" as it passes through our atmosphere. The same phenomenon can be demonstrated with "twinkling" stars. The stars don't truly twinkle, but as their light passes through the Earth's atmosphere, it is distorted to the extent that the human eye sees stars as twinkling.

Answer 4

Stars twinkle for two possible different reasons:

1) The Earth's atmospheric movements cause the light we receive from the stars to vary in brightness.

and/or

2) Many stars are binaries--actually two stars, one usually much larger than the other, that rotate around each other, causing the brightness, and even the color of the light, to vary.