Tuesday, November 15, 2022

♞ Star Magnitude (Brightness) Explained

Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky in the constellation Canis Major.
I've got a video on it.
Go see it if you want to learn more.
That star is negative 1.5, so it's really bright when you compare it to say- Well I don't want to say really, really bright but and I'm not going to get into the mathematics of this.
If we bounce back to Polaris Sirius would definitely be brighter than Polaris.
If we keep going Venus, a planet now, that we're speaking of, has a magnitude of -4.
So that tells us Venus is really bright in the sky. I can always tell where Venus is because it is the brightest object in the sky next to the Sun.
The Sun has a magnitude of -27.
That seems counter-intuitive, right? That negative means it would wouldn't be as bright, but remember it's that inverse scale.

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