capable of precise expression, and agreeing roughly, at any rate as far as naked-eye stars are concerned, with the current usages; while at the Cape he measured carefully the light of a large number of bright stars and classified them on this principle. According to the scale now generally adopted, first suggested in 1856 by Norman Robert Pogson (1829–1891), the light of a star of any magnitude bears a fixed ratio (which is taken to be 2⋅512...) to that of a star of the next magnitude. The number is so chosen that a star of the sixth magnitude—thus defined—is 100 times fainter than one of the first magnitude.[1] Stars of intermediate brightness have magnitudes expressed by fractions which can be at once calculated (according to a simple mathematical rule) when the ratio of the light received from the star to that received from a standard star has been observed.[2]
Most of the great star catalogues (§ 280) have included estimates of the magnitudes of stars. The most extensive and accurate series of measurements of star brightness have been those executed at Harvard and at Oxford under the superintendence of Professor E. C. Pickering and the late Professor Pritchard respectively. Both catalogues deal with stars visible to the naked eye the Harvard catalogue (published in 1884) comprises 4,260 stars between the North Pole and 30 southern declination, and the Uranometria Nova Oxoniensis (1885), as it is called, only goes 10° south of the equator and includes 2,784 stars. Portions of more extensive catalogues dealing with fainter stars, in progress at Harvard and at Potsdam, have also been published.
- ↑ I.e. 2⋅512... is chosen as being the number the logarithm of which is ⋅4, so that (2⋅512...)5/2 = 10.
- ↑ If L be the ratio of the light received from a star to that received from a standard first magnitude star, such as Aldebaran or Altair, then its magnitude m is given by the formula
L = (12⋅512)m−1 = (1100)m−15, whence m−1 = −52 log L.
A star brighter than Aldebaran has a magnitude less than 1, while the magnitude of Sirius, which is about nine times as bright as Aldebaran, is a negative quantity, 1⋅4, according to the Harvard photometry.
