Number That is used to comapre the brightness of stars???

Answer 1

this is what i found ,it will help you a lot;and in the source ls is the #1 source
Response #: 1 of 2
Author: Samuel p Bowen
The amount of light a star emits depends on how much nuclear fuel is being
consumed and on whether any of the emitted light can escape the surface of
the star. The light a star emits during its lifetime will change. When a
star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it can expand and become a red giant, or it
can collapse and become a black hole. There is lots known about stars and
the life they evolve through.

Response #: 2 of 2
Author: Haley
The brightness of stars as seen from the Earth is called "apparent visual
magnitude"; it is designated by "m subscript v" and is a logarithmic scale
like the Richter scale used for earthquakes. The brightest star seen from
the Earth's northern hemisphere is Sirius, the Dog Star with a _m subscript
v_ of -1.5 (the stellar magnitude scale is one in which a negative number is
brighter than a positive number). The absolute visual magnitude, designated
by "M subscript v", gives the true brightness:
Deneb (alpha Cygnus) has Mv = -6.9, and Rigel (beta Orion) is almost as
bright with Mv = -6.8. On the absolute scale, Sirius is only Mv = +1.4; it
appears to be the brightest because of its nearby distance, only 2.65
parsecs.

Answer 2

Absolute magnitude and apparent magnitude.

Apparent magnitude is the brightness as it appears from earth.
The values are arranged in such a way that the brightest stars we see in the sky are generally 1. Less bright, 2. Less brighter than that, 3 and so on until the dimmest star we can see is about 6. Things that are brighter than the brightest stars (like some planets) have negative numbers (for example, Venus is -4.6). By the way, the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere turns out to be -1.5, which is Sirius.

Absolute magnitude is the brightness of the star is the star was 32.6 light years away from earth. The numbering systems is the same as apparent magnitude (big negative numbers are the brightest, positive numbers are the dimmest)

Our sun has apparent magnitude of -26.8 because it is so bright to us. But it has an absolute magnitude of +5.

Answer 3

The brightness of stars is compared by their relative magnitudes. Actually there are two types of magnitude by which astronomers classify the brightness of stars --
APPARENT MAGNITUDE - This is how bright the star appears to us here on Earth;
ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE - This is how bright a star would appear if the observer was 32.6 light years from the object. This particular scale is used to compare the total energy output per second of the star.

Our own sun has an apparent magnitude (..how bright it appears from Earth..) of -26.8 but an absolute magnitude of +5. Remember, the smaller the number the brighter is the object both in apparent and absolute magnitude.

Answer 4

It's called magnitude. The smaller the number, the brighter the star. Negative numbers indicate fairly bright stars like Sirius or Arcturus. The sun comes in at a whopping -26.