Why do we not see the stars in the day time?
In the early days, before it was understood much about the heavens and the science of astronomy, many people believed that the stars actually cease to shine during the daytime. The ancient Egyptians believed that they were lamps lighted each night by the gods, so that the sky would be more beautiful. They thought that the gods let these lanterns down on cables through the holes in the sky, and in the morning pulled them up again and put them out.
The stars continue shining all the time, day and night. We don’t see them in the daytime because of the atmosphere around the earth which breaks up and spread out the sunlight into a blanket of brightness through which we stars are not visible. We can see through the environment at night, the shining of stars, because then there is no scattered sunlight. If there were no atmosphere, we could watch the stars in the daytime as well as at night. The sun would appear simply as a clearly defined disc of light in a black sky encircled by many thousands of brilliant stars.
During a total conceal of the sunlight, we can see the brighter stars and whatever planets happen to be in the sky at the time. When Venus, the brightest of the planets, is at its most brilliance, it can be seen in the daytime sky if one knows where to look for it. It is also true that if one could climb high enough in an airplane to get above the main part of the atmosphere, the stars would be visible at anytime. The phrase by star light would mean both night and day.
Even at night, of course the stars are often hidden from our sight. Clouds hide them very effectively as well as fog and haze. After traveling a remote distance through space, the rays of light from the stars may at the very end of journey, be hidden from our sight by a thin curtain of clouds above us.
Above the clouds or out through the halo of light that surrounds the earth, the stars are always shining. Day and night, in moon light and sunlight, clear or stormy weather, they circle constantly high the earth. So, now, with this study, we can understand that why the stars in the day light are not around visible.
By Rehana Khan (111/10)
