The Sun’s apparent magnitude is –26.7. Move it to a distance of 10 parsecs, and its absolute magnitude drops to 4.8. That is a brightness difference of 3.98 trillion!

Greetings, Stargazers. Stars come in all colors and sizes. But our eyes limit us to seeing very few of those colors. And the range of apparent magnitudes of stars we can see with our naked ...

Absolute magnitude defines an object’s brightness if it were exactly 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) from Earth. So any object closer than 32.6 light-years has an apparent magnitude brighter than ...