Charles Francis Richter in southern California. Since 1935, several other magnitude scales have been developed. Richter was an active and avowed naturist. He travelled to many nudist communities with his wife. At his retirement party, a group of colleagues at Caltech, called the "Quidnuncs," played and sang a ditty titled "Richter Scale," which gave examples of earthquakes in American history, told in ballad style. Richter was not amused, however; he was furious. The author of the song, Kent Clark, stated in a 1989 interview that Richter enjoyed the song. The song is played on the Dr. Demento show occasionally. Richter died of congestive
Absolute magnitude and a difference of n magnitudes in absolute magnitude corresponds to a luminosity ratio of 100. For example, a star of absolute magnitude M=3 would be 100 times more luminous than a star of absolute magnitude M=8 as measured in the V filter band. The Sun has absolute magnitude M=+4.83. Highly luminous objects can have negative absolute magnitudes: for example, the Milky Way galaxy has an absolute B magnitude of about −20.8. An object's absolute bolometric magnitude represents its total luminosity over all wavelengths, rather than in a single filter band, as expressed on a logarithmic magnitude scale. To convert