A glance at the night sky above Earth shows that some stars are much brighter than others. However, the brightness of a star depends on its composition and how far it is from the planet. Astronomers ...

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 eye is also rather limited.

The initial magnitude scale was established by Greek astronomer Hipparchus around 135 B.C.E., categorizing approximately 850 stars into six ranges from 1st (brightest) to 6th (faintest) magnitude.

The astronomical magnitude system, initially developed by Hipparchus and refined by Ptolemy, quantifies the brightness of celestial objects, with brighter objects having lower magnitudes. Norman R.