Seismic magnitude scales the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior (IASPEI) has standardized the measurement procedures and equations for the principal magnitude scales, , , , and . The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes, developed in 1935 by Charles F. Richter and popularly known as the "Richter" scale, is actually the , label ML or M. Richter established two features now common to all magnitude scales. First, the scale is logarithmic, so that each unit represents a ten-fold increase in the "amplitude" of the seismic waves. As the energy of a wave is 10 times its amplitude, each
Absolute magnitude corresponds to absolute bolometric magnitude 4.74. Placing a radiation source (e.g. star) at the standard distance of 10 parsecs, it follows that the zero point of the apparent bolometric magnitude scale corresponds to irradiance . Using the IAU 2015 scale, the nominal total solar irradiance ("solar constant") measured at 1 astronomical unit () corresponds to an apparent bolometric magnitude of the Sun of −26.832. Following Resolution B2, the relation between a star's absolute bolometric magnitude and its luminosity is no longer directly tied to the Sun's (variable) luminosity: where The new IAU absolute magnitude scale permanently disconnects the scale from