So, if we're here on Earth and a star was placed at 10 parsecs away, 32.6 light years, how bright would it be? So we can have two different values for magnitude based upon the lens at which you're looking at.
Let's get an example of this.
So this star, right here. This is Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus.
It has an apparent magnitude of 0.87, so very close to 1 which tells us it's a bright object, but its absolute magnitude is -0.63. This seems confusing because it's like, "Oh does that mean it's brighter or dimmer?" I do want to go ahead and explore the difference between the negative which are usually brighter numbers.
Then, the positive.
The bigger the number the dimmer it is.
I wanted to just go over this concept of Aldebaran having two different types of magnitude.
One being what we see from our perspective and one being if it this star was placed at a particular distance what would the brightness be. So let's take a look at some of the examples of different stars we see in the sky versus what their magnitude would be.
I'm purely speaking of apparent magnitude.
Remember the scale works in reverse.
So the lower the magnitude the brighter the star.
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