Helen Schlichting, age 13, of Randolph, Neb., for her question:

Are stars really pointed?

The light from the distant stars reaches us through the blanket of atmosphere that stretches far above our heads. The molecules of this air play all kinds of tricks with beams of light. They make the starlight dance in piercing darts. The stars seems to twinkle and sparkle with pointed edges.

But we are often fooled by what we see or think we see in the heavens. The distant stars are not pointed with darts of light. They are round spheres of blazing gases. Each is a nuclear furnace of seething energy, and though sheets of fiery gases shoot up from the surface these cannot be seen as points from our planet.