Quote:
Originally Posted by LewisM
Yeah, what Andrew said and I tried to say  |
Lewis, I deleted my post because it pretty much duplicated yours. Let me try to remember what I said.
Stars are so far away that they appear as pinpoints of light. Any disturbance in the atmosphere causes the light path to change so the star appears to move, which you see as twinkling.
Planets are close enough that they appear as a disk. The atmospheric disturbance affects the light from the planet the same as it does stars but because the disturbance is less than the size of the disk you don't see any twinkling.
Taking photos of planets has to make allowance for the atmospheric effects. You do this by taking hundreds or thousands of images (normally using a video style camera) and only keeping the best few percent of them to combine.