Lorraine Raymond, age 15, of SpoKane, WA for his  question:

Why do the stars twinkle?

Every star is a gigantic powerhouse of nuclear energy, shooting forth its blazing radiation in all directions. Telescope pictures show that our starry sun shoots forth fiery streamers into space. Hut this is not why a star seams to dart forth points of light. The reason for this is much nearer home in our own atmosphere.

The gassy air above our heads plays tricks with the beams of light from a faraway star. Star beams become twisted and seem to dare out from the bright center of the star   and the star seems to twinkle. This distorts our picture of the star. Someday soon we hope to study the stars from the moon which has no atmosphere to blur the view.