Definition

The importance, quality or size of some­thing. In ASTRONOMY, relative brightness of a CELESTIAL BODY. According to the accepted classifica­tion, a STAR of the 1st magnitude is a hundred times as bright as a STAR of the 6th mag­nitude (the faintest STAR that can be seen with the unaided eye) and the dis­tribution of magnitudes is logarithmic in terms of brightness. Thus each reduction in magnitude means an increase of brightness of about 2 1/2.