If someone asks you, “How bright is that star?” and your answer is “Pretty bright,” that isn’t very useful. And, of course, it’s worthless for any type of comparative research. So for centuries, ...

We know an earthquake is severe when it has a high magnitude number. The 1985 quake that devastated Mexico City was an 8. The quake that shook central Mexico this week was a 7.1. But what exactly is ...

There are a number of ways to measure the magnitude of an earthquake. Most scales are based on the amplitude of seismic waves recorded on seismometers. These scales account for the distance between ...

II.—APPARENT MAGNITUDES: (b) PHOTOGRAPHIC. WITH the application of photography to astronomy it was inevitable that attempts should be made to determine apparent magnitudes by photography. Visual ...

Star Gazers is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and ...

This article examines the spectroscopic properties of young stellar objects, linking accretion dynamics to observed ...

I.—APPARENT MAGNITUDES: (a) VISUAL.THE magnitude of a star, as determined by direct astronomical observation, is a measure of its apparent brightness on a scale which has been precisely defined only ...