Moment magnitude scale develop methods to process earthquake signals automatically. In the mid-1970s Dziewonski started the Harvard Global Centroid Moment Tensor Catalog. After this advance, it was possible to introduce and estimate it for large numbers of earthquakes. Hence the moment magnitude scale represented a major step forward in characterizing earthquakes. Most earthquake magnitude scales suffered from the fact that they only provided a comparison of the amplitude of waves produced at a standard distance and frequency band; it was difficult to relate these magnitudes to a physical property of the earthquake. Gutenberg and Richter suggested that radiated energy E could be estimated
Apparent magnitude brightness of sources at ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths. An apparent magnitude is usually measured in a specific passband corresponding to some photometric system such as the UBV system. In standard astronomical notation, an apparent magnitude in the V ("visual") filter band would be denoted either as "m" or often simply as "V", as in ""m" = 15" or ""V" = 15" to describe a 15th-magnitude object. The scale used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six "magnitudes". The brightest stars in the night sky were said to be