Re: [Phys-L] absolute magnitude

[John Mallinckrodt <ajm@csupomona.edu>]

My guess would be that that is a typical distance for stars that actually ARE visible (there are ~400 stars within 10 parsecs) so adopting this standard means that most stars will have *absolute* magnitudes that line up nicely with familiar *visual* magnitudes.

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

On Sep 14, 2012, at 1:09 PM, Bill Nettles wrote:

> I've done some searching, but obviously not in the right places:
>
> How did astronomers arrive at 10 parsecs as the distance used for computing absolute magnitudes?
>
> Bill Nettles
> Union University
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