Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...see with the naked eye several meteors per hour. Meteors can last for a small fraction of a second up to several seconds. Quite often, as the glowing meteoroid streaks through the sky, it varies in brightness, appears to emit sparks or flares, and sometimes leaves a luminous train that lingers after its flight has ended. Unusually luminous meteors are termed fireballs or bolides (the latter...
Neptune is the only giant planet that is not visible without a telescope. Having an apparent magnitude of 7.8, it is approximately one-fifth as bright as the faintest stars visible to the unaided eye. Hence, it is fairly certain that there were no observations of Neptune prior to the use of telescopes. Galileo is credited as the first person to view the heavens with a telescope in 1609. His...
...differences between giant and dwarf stars of the same spectral type and laid the foundation for the determination of spectroscopic parallaxes. These differences, depending upon the intrinsic brightness of the star, allow an estimate of its absolute magnitude, and the parallax can then be deduced by means of the equation (2) given above. This method has been applied to most of the...
Stellar brightnesses are usually expressed by means of their magnitudes, a usage inherited from classical times. A star of the first magnitude is about 2.5 times as bright as one of the second magnitude, which in turn is some 2.5 times as bright as one of the third magnitude, and so on. A star of the first magnitude is therefore 2.55 or 100 times as bright as one of the sixth...
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