The Da Vinci Notebooks
On the light of the stars (911-913).The stars are visible by night and not by day, because we are beneath the dense atmosphere, which is full of innumerable particles of moisture, each of which independently, when the rays of the sun fall upon it, reflects a radiance, and so these numberless bright particles conceal the stars; and if it were not for this atmosphere the sky would always display the stars against its darkness. 487
169:487 : 911: See Vol. I, No. 296, which also refers to starlight.