The stars become visible in the sky as soon as there is darkness after the sunset. As the darkness increases, the number as well as brightness of the stars also increase. The number of visible stars dwindles with the approach of dawn. Only very bright stars remain visible. At sunrise all the stars disappear. Do you know why stars are not visible during the day?
Some people think that as the sun disappears during the night, the stars too vanish during the day. But this is not correct. The stars never disappear. They simply become invisible during the day because of the brightness of the sun’s rays. In fact, the dust, gas and water vapours present in the atmosphere scatter the sun’s rays in all the directions. Due to this, the whole atmosphere starts shining. The light of stars is very weak as compared to the sunlight and as such it fails to make any impact on our eyes. We, therefore, can not see the stars during the day. This fact becomes clear by just observing a burning lamp. During night a lamp’s flame is visible from a long distance, but during the day the same is not visible to us even from a short distance. This implies that even a feeble light can reach our eyes during the night and as such stars become visible to us at night. Had there been no atmosphere, the stars would have been visible even during the day. Stars are visible in the space even during the day because in space you are beyond the atmosphere.
