This measure should not be confused with the astronomical magnitude logarithmic scale of brightness.
In Jules Verne's Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon) the character of Joe, the manservant, is described as enjoying, "in common with Moestlin, Kepler's professor, the rare faculty of distinguishing the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye, and of counting fourteen of the stars in the group of Pleiades, the remotest of them being only of the ninth magnitude."
The supernova was at magnitude 16.4 at discovery, and quickly rose to a peak magnitude of around 15.3 (in visible light) just over a week after discovery.
Richter magnitude scale | Moment magnitude scale | Apparent magnitude | apparent magnitude | Surface wave magnitude | moment magnitude scale | Magnitude of eclipse | Eire Apparent | Body wave magnitude | Apparent-time hypothesis | Apparent death |
Only one stellar occultation by Alkeste has been observed, when the asteroid passed in front of the third magnitude star Beta Virginis on June 24, 2003.
Roger Rigollet (Lagny, France) rediscovered the comet on 1939-07-28; it was described as diffuse and with a magnitude of 8.0.
#SS Cygni stars (UGSS), which increase in brightness by 2-6 mag in V in 1–2 days, and return to their original brightnesses in several subsequent days.
The former marked the first time a nova's spectrum had been photographed, while the latter eventually reached magnitude 0.2 to become the brightest nova in history since the supernova SN 1604, though it was later topped by Nova Aquilae 1918.
Assuming this event is identical to SN 1054, it would shine with an apparent magnitude of -8.71, about 1/40 as bright as the full moon despite its distance of over 1,800 light years.