Why does Arcturus star have greater absolute magnitude than the sun buy a much lower apparent magnitude?

Answer 1

The apparent magnitude is how bright the star appears to us, but stars are all at different distances so that a star that is really bright might look dim because it is very far away. So the absolute magnitude measures how bright the star would look if it was placed at a standard distance of 10 parsecs.

When the absolute magnitude is greater than the apparent magnitude, it just means that it is closer than 10 pc.

The brightest stars have absolute magnitudes around -7.

Answer 2

The absolute magnitude is the real brightness of a star; and it is defined as the apparent magnitude (apparent brightness) at a standard distance (10 parsec) - in other words, how bright would it look from that distance.

• For a star at the standard distance, the absolute and apparent magnitudes are the same.
• For a star at a distance greater than the standard distance, its apparent magnitude would be less than its absolute magnitude.
• For a star at less distance than the standard distance, its apparent magnitude would be greater than its absolute magnitude.

Answer 3

The apparent magnitude (apparent brightness) depends both on the absolute magnitude (the actual brightness, as measured at a standard distance), and on the distance from us. All the stars other than the Sun are much more distant from us than the Sun; as a result, even a star a million times brighter than our Sun will look faint to us.

Answer 4

Because it's so close to us.

The NEXT NEAREST star is more than 260 THOUSAND times

farther from us than the sun is.

Answer 5

Their distance from us.