November 21, 2024

Exploring the Mysteries of Faint Galactic Magnitudes

It has a reasonably dim apparent magnitude of 13.6, much fainter than the Sun and lots of celestial bodies due to the reverse logarithmic scale of magnitude. Astronomers have different methods of quantifying how bright celestial things are, and evident magnitude is one of them.The Concept of Apparent MagnitudeFirstly, the apparent part of this quantity refers to the fact that evident magnitude only describes how brilliant objects appear to be from Earth, which is not the exact same thing as measuring how brilliant they actually are.For example, in truth, the variable star Betelgeuse is about 21,000 times brighter than our Sun, however since the Sun is much, much closer to Earth, Betelgeuse appears to be greatly less brilliant than it.The magnitude part is a little more difficult to explain, since the magnitude scale does not have actually an unit associated with it, unlike, for example, mass, which we measure in kilograms, or length, which we determine in meters. The scale is not direct, but is a type of mathematical scale understood as reverse logarithmic, which likewise indicates that lower-magnitude objects are brighter than higher-magnitude objects.Comparing UGC 11105s Brightness to Other Celestial ObjectsAs an example, UGC 11105 has an evident magnitude of around 13.6 in the optical, whereas the Sun has an evident magnitude of about -26.8.