Please read...I saw a star....

I saw a star tonight blinking rapidly in different colors.It was quite bright. I want to know what this means. What is happening to the star?

This is known as scintillation or twinkling. It has nothing to do with the star itself, but is an effect caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, which deflects the star's light. Twinkling in colour is only seen with a few of the very brightest stars, such as Sirius, Canopus, and Arcturus.

[Edit] The people who dismiss this as a plane or a helicopter are totally ignorant of astronomy, and what stars actually look like. I wish people wouldn't guess at answers when they have no idea what they're talking about.

If it is to the left of Orion, it is the bright star Sirius, which is only about 6 light years away.
The next brightest is the Southern Star Alpha Centauri, Earth's local Neighbour at 4.5 Light Years away.

Geoff is absolutely right, and it's sad that we have so many people who are so ignorant about this. What you saw was a star, not a plane or any man-made aircraft.

I have seen about 100 of these when waiting for the bus. It is basically a really hot star. If it flashes red, blue, green, and red, then it is a star.


Hope this helps.

It could have been an aircraft or it could have been the International Space Station.

It probably a plane or helicopter they usually blink red, green and blue lights at a pretty fast pace

It was most likely an aircraft of some sort, most likely a helicopter.

It was probably just a bulldozer.

It was clearly an elephant.

It is a helicopter.

It is probably just a plane or a helicopter -_-

probably a plane or helicopter

That was a plane, darling.