Star flicker of the ISS

It turns out that spaceships twinkle just like stars. Why is this happening? Look at the image of the ISS that Dutch astronomer Ralf vandeberg took on September 3.

"This is one of my best shots of the ISS. I recorded the video using a 10-inch telescope in the Netherlands, manually tracking the space station across the sky, " vandeberg said.

In the video, the space station seems to be shaking. This is the result of scintillation, a phenomenon caused by thermal inhomogeneity in the Earth's atmosphere. Due to the fact that masses of relatively warm and cold air drift in front of the ISS, the image of the station is distorted and refracted. These same air masses are the cause of stellar flickering when we look at the sky.

Scintillation is a key problem when photographing the ISS from under the Earth's atmosphere. Because of this effect, images are blurred.