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Magnitude. The degree of brightness of a star or other object in the sky according to a scale on which the brightest star has a magnitude -1.4 and the faintest visible star has magnitude 6. Sometimes referred to as apparent magnitude. In this scale, each number is 2.5 times the brightness of the previous number. Thus a star with a magnitude of 1 is 100 times brighter than on with a visual magnitude of 6.
Astronomers use two different definitions of magnitude: apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude. The apparent magnitude (m, or vmag for the visible spectrum) is the brightness of an object as it appears in the night sky from Earth, while the absolute magnitude (M v, V and H) describes the intrinsic brightness of an object as it would appear if it were placed at a certain distance from Earth, 10 parsecs for stars.