
Yes, twinkling stars have always been a magical part of our night sky and were the inspiration for that timeless poem that we learned as a children's song long ago. As he rises higher and higher in the sky he gains composure and his beams now sparkle like the most brilliant diamond - not a pure white, but slightly tinged with iridescence." "He comes richly dight in many colors, twinkling fast and changing with each motion from tints of ruby to sapphire and emerald and amethyst. Martin to describe its appearance in her 1907 classic book, "The Friendly Stars". It was this very spectacle that led author Martha E. Since a star's white color is actually a blending of every color of the spectrum, and each is bent rapidly in different directions at different times by moving air currents, Sirius appears as a colorful celestial sparkler. The effect is even more spectacular when viewed through binoculars or a telescope thrown slightly out of focus.īut this is a perfectly natural phenomenon, at least to those who peer skyward more than once every year or so. Watch Sirius for more than a few seconds and you'll discover that it doesn't just appear to twinkle wildly it fires off colorful sparks that often prompt calls to observatories and emergency personnel. Right now, the most dramatic example of this appears low in the east-southeastern sky after dark with the brightest star in all the heavens: Sirius, the Dog Star, lying just beneath a line formed by the three equally bright "belt" stars of Orion, the hunter. Similarly, a star's light distorts thousands of times each second, as it travels from the still vacuum of space into our thick, turbulent atmosphere - especially when appearing low in the sky. We've all seen this effect on a hot summer day, when our view of a terrestrial scene over a sizzling roadway or barbeque is distorted by rising heat waves. (The earliest known appearance of the words and the music together dates to 1838. Sometime later the poem was set to the melody of Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman. Twinkling - or, more scientifically, "scintillation"- originates not with the stars themselves but with the air through which their light must travel before reaching our eyes. As for Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, it originated as a poem written by the English author Jane Taylor and was published in 1806 as The Star. But do they? Our childhood beliefs are often at odds with reality, and this is a perfect case in point. We've all grown up singing this magical song and believing that stars actually twinkle. Link to the sheet music below.It began as a five-verse poem called "The Star" that appeared in the 1806 publication "Rhymes for the Nursery." More than three decades later, this poem by Ann and Jane Taylor was set to music - a 1761 French folk tune that, coincidentally, seemed to fit perfectly: Who actually wrote it? No-one really knows. While he composed variations on the tune, the melody already existed. Recent Questions and Answers on Twinkle Twinkle little Star - English After the setting of the sun what is the condition of grass How many stars are in the.

It is widely believed that the tune for this rhyme was one of Mozart's earliest compositions. The other theory tells of a mother humming it to her child who was not yet able to speak, with the name 'Twinkle' coming from the word 'twinkling'. One, which is more traditional, is that it was written by Jane Taylor, an English poet and novelist in 1806 for her little sister Ann Taylor. There are two theories about how it originated. It has been adapted into many languages and found new life across the world.

It is a nursery rhyme that originated in England in the 18th century. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is the most popular lullaby in English-speaking countries, originally sung as a bedtime song.
