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Re: [Phys-L] absolute magnitude

I think it is just an arbitrary convention. Most of the stars that are visible have absolute magnitudes less than (brighter than) their visual magnitudes. Most of the stars within 10 pc are not even visible to the naked eye.

Leigh

On 2012-09-15, at 9:00 AM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

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.