Misconceptions about astronomical magnitudes

Eric Schulmana)
National Radio Astronomy Observatory,b) 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-2475

Caroline V. Coxc)
Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 3818 University Station, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903

Received 16 December 1996; accepted 24 April 1997 The present system of astronomical magnitudes was created as an inverse scale by Claudius Ptolemy in about 140 A.D. and was dened to be logarithmic in 1856 by Norman Pogson, who believed that human eyes respond logarithmically to the intensity of light. Although scientists have known for some time that the response is instead a power law, astronomers continue to use the Pogson magnitude scale. The peculiarities of this system make it easy for students to develop numerous misconceptions about how and why to use magnitudes. We present a useful exercise in the use of magnitudes to derive a cosmologically interesting quantity the mass-to-light ratio for spiral galaxies, with potential pitfalls pointed out and explained. 1997 American Association of Physics
Teachers.

I. INTRODUCTION The English astronomer Norman Robert Pogson proposed the current form of the logarithmic system of magnitudes in 1856.1 In this system a magnitude difference of one corresponds to a brightness or ux ratio of about 2.512. Pogson based the system on the work of Ptolemy,2 who probably based his work on the now lost writings of the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus. See Hearnshaw3 and Sterken and Manfroid4 for detailed descriptions of the origins of the magnitude system. The system of astronomical magnitudes is represented by the following formula: m 1 m 2 2.5 log f 1 / f 2 , 1

where m denotes apparent magnitude and f denotes ux. Students nd this confusing because it is an inverse scale with brighter objects having smaller magnitudes, it is a relative scale that is not easily converted into physical units, and it is a logarithmic scale in an obscure base, namely, 1001/5 2.511 886 431 5..., 2 so that a decrease of one magnitude represents an increase in brightness of a factor of about 2.5. This isnt as arbitrary as it sounds. Astronomers in the nineteenth century had noticed that a difference of ve magnitudes in Ptolemys catalog represented a difference in brightness of about a factor of
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100, and logarithms were used extensively by scientists in many different elds at that time5 in 1860 G. T. Fechner proposed a logarithmic relationship between the apparent magnitude of a sensation and the stimulus that causes it6. In fact, the response of our senses is much better t by a power law, not only for sight but also for hearing, smell, taste, and many other stimuli.7 It took almost a century for the scientic establishment to accept that Fechners law is incorrect, and there are still many introductory astronomy texts that claim that the eyes response to light is logarithmic.8 A comparison of the logarithmic and power law7 systems of magnitudes is shown in Fig. 1. Both scales agree that a magnitude 1 star is 100 times brighter than a magnitude 6 star, but the scales disagree at all other points. This introduces a subtle bias to visual magnitude estimates of objects using comparison stars of known magnitude: Objects bracketed in brightness by two comparison stars are assigned a magnitude that is too low they are fainter than we think they are, while objects brighter or fainter than all comparison stars are assigned a magnitude that is too high they are brighter than we think they are. For example, there is a difference of ve magnitudes between Sirius ( m V 1.5) and Ceti ( m V 3.5). A student trying to visually determine the magnitude of Aldebaran ( m V 0.9) using these two comparison stars would estimate a magnitude of about 0.4,
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We can use the concept of astronomical magnitudes to teach students some important lessons about how science works, in particular, that scientic conventions can be very powerful, existing long after the discovery of more appropriate methods. The Pogson magnitude scale is cumbersome and somewhat misleading, but astronomers are accustomed to its use. An extremely large fraction of astronomical papers in the last 100 years use Pogson magnitudes, which makes changing brightness systems very difcult. It is therefore unlikely that the system will be replaced in the foreseeable future.3

Fig. 1. A comparison of the logarithmic astronomical; solid line and power law human vision; dotted line systems of magnitudes.

II. MAGNITUDES ARE DEFINED IN A SINGLE PASSBAND There is an important assumption in Eq. 1 that many students will not realize: Comparing the difference in magnitudes between two different objects makes sense only if the two magnitudes are measured from the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum i.e., optical observations must have used the same lter. In Pogsons day this was not much of an issue, because all measurements were performed using lterless telescopes and the human eye note that different eyes do have different sensitivities, however. Pogson dened Vega to be a magnitude 0 object, and later astronomers have used Vega to determine the zero point of various magnitude systems. One popular example is the UBV ultravioletbluevisual system of lters,10 in which magnitudes are denoted as m V or V , m B or B , and m U or U . In this system, Vega has V B U 0, so B V U B 0. Stars with surface temperatures larger than an A0 V star like Vega ( T eff10 000 K) have negative values of B V and U B and are called blue astronomers refer to magnitude differences as colors, another concept that can confuse students, while cooler stars have positive B V and U B colors and are called yellow for stars with 0 B V 1 or red for stars with B V 1 . This neglects extinction effects and the presence of stellar absorption lines, both of which produce deviations from pure blackbody radiation. Filters have also been developed for use in the red ( RI 11 and near-infrared JHKL 12 regimes; some properties13 of these lter systems are listed in Table I. One way to demonstrate to students the pitfalls of mixing

which would be a factor of 3 too bright. This December observing project is interesting because the answer the student should get is is quite different from the true visual magnitude of Aldebaran, which is listed in most astronomy texts. This bias can be reduced by using comparison stars with a smaller magnitude range. If students tried to visually estimate the magnitude of Altair ( m V 0.8) using Vega ( m V 0.0) and Deneb ( m V 1.3) as comparison stars, the expected magnitude would be m V 0.7, an error in brightness of only 10%. Now that most magnitudes are calculated using photographic, photoelectric, or charge-coupled device photometry, the exact system of magnitudes does not matter as much as it used to. However, there are still some observations that rely on visual magnitude estimates for example, observations of Supernova 1993J soon after its discovery9. An observer trying to visually determine the magnitude of a supernova assumed to have m V 11.0 using comparison stars with m V 10.0 and m V 12.0 would estimate a magnitude of 10.8, which would be 20% brighter than the supernova really is. A 10% or 20% systematic error is often acceptably small in an undergraduate lab, but can be unacceptably large in professional research. Note that observers using different sets of comparison stars would have different magnitude estimates, which complicates the correction for this effect.

Table I. Standard photometric systems. Filter Band U B V R I J H K L

a b

0a 3 650 4 400 5 500 7 000 9 000 12 500 16 500 22 000 36 000

0 b 680 980 890 2 200 2 400 3 000 4 000 6 000 12 000

f (0) c (ergs cm2 s1 1 ) 4.27 10 9 6.61 10 9 3.64 10 9 1.74 10 9 8.3210 10 3.1810 10 1.1810 10 4.1710 11 6.2310 12

f (0) c (W m2 Hz1) 1.90 10 23 4.27 10 23 3.67 10 23 2.84 10 23 2.25 10 23 1.65 10 23 1.07 10 23 6.73 10 24 2.69 10 24

C 13.84 12.97 13.72 13.54 14.25 15.05 15.82 16.50 17.82

Central wavelength of lter. Full-width at half-maximum FWHM of lter. c Absolute spectral irradiance for mag 0.00. 1004 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 65, No. 10, October 1997 E. Schulman and C. V. Cox 1004

magnitude systems is to use the B and V magnitudes of Vega in Eq. 1 and talk about what this would imply about the star. We would nd that B V 0 2.5 log f V / f B ; thus f V f B . 4 In reality, Vega is a factor of 2 brighter in the blue than in the visible, so we have done something wrong in using Eq. 1 in this fashion: Equation (1) can only be used to compare magnitudes and uxes measured within the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The example above illustrates one of the fundamental problems with the magnitude system: it is not in physical units, but is merely a system of relative not absolute brightness, and therefore it is unlike the vast majority of mathematical relations to which students have been exposed. When we observe a star using a B lter and nd that it has B 5, all we know immediately is that if we had been observing Vega for the same period of time, with the same instrument and lter and through the same amount of atmosphere, we would have seen 100 times as many photons. To nd the ux in B we also have to know Vegas ux in B or the B ux of some other object whose B magnitude we know. The zero points of each lter are different, so knowing what the zero point in B is doesnt tell us how to convert a V magnitude into physical units. From gamma rays to radio waves, almost all astronomy is done using physical units such as ux (ergs s1 cm2) or ux density (ergs s1 cm2 Hz1). The sole exceptions are the near-infrared and optical regimes, where stars emit most of their energy. Let us look at a detailed example to see what pitfalls the magnitude system can hold. III. A MASS-TO-LIGHT CALCULATION The use of magnitudes in an introductory astronomy course for nonmajors is optional because only those nonscience majors who are going to make a serious foray into the world of amateur astronomy really need to understand how magnitudes work. It is much more important, however, in junior/senior-level astrophysics courses designed to provide some preparation for students interested in graduate school in astronomy or astrophysics. Such courses are also taken by physics undergraduates as upper-division electives. In such a class the students would be expected to synthesize knowledge from other parts of the course, from other courses, and from the astronomical literature. The following problem is not an exercise in understanding magnitudes, but it requires the student to understand them in order to proceed. When astronomers want to determine how much dark matter is in a galaxy, they typically measure the mass-to-light ( M / L ) ratio, in which the mass is determined through radio observations and the light emitted by stars in the galaxy is measured in the optical usually through a B lter. This can be an interesting problem for advanced undergraduates who have been introduced to the concept of dark matter; they can use real measurements of galaxies to perform calculations that astronomers use in current research. The information needed is the apparent magnitude of a galaxy in B , its optical angular diameter ( opt), the distance to the galaxy ( D ), and the rotational velocity of the galaxy ( v rot).
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The students will need to convert the magnitude to a luminosity. The way this is typically done is to convert from apparent magnitude ( m ) to absolute magnitude M ; the apparent magnitude the object would have if it were at a distance of 10 parsecs (1 parsec3.0861018 cm) via M m 5 5 log D A , 5 where the distance is in parsecs and A ( ) is the reduction in brightness produced by dust along the line of sight to the object for simplicity this can be assumed to be 0 since the lines of sight to most galaxies do not pass through much of the Galactic plane, where interstellar dust is concentrated. From the absolute magnitude, they can convert to luminosity ( L ) by modifying Eq. 1: M 1 M 2 2.5 log L 1 / L 2 . 6 Students may be tempted to convert the luminosity to physical units e.g., ergs s1 since this is the standard way of solving physics problems. Two common numbers in astronomy texts are the absolute bolometric summed over all wavelengths magnitude of the sun 4.72, and the total luminosity of the sun (4 1033 ergs s1), so they may try using M gal B 4.72 2.5 log L gal B /4 1033 ergs s1 . 7

If they determine M gal( B ) by inserting the apparent B magnitude of the galaxy and the distance to the galaxy in Eq. 5, then they may think that they can get the blue luminosity of the galaxy by using Eq. 7. But this answer is incorrect because we are not allowed to use different systems in this case, blue magnitudes and bolometric magnitudes in Eq. (1). It would be OK, however, to calculate L gal( B ) based on the solar blue luminosity. The absolute blue magnitude of the sun is 5.48, so we obtain M gal B 5.48 2.5 log L gal B / L sun B , 8

where L gal( B )/ L sun( B ) is also known as the blue luminosity of the galaxy in solar blue luminosities or sometimes, somewhat misleadingly, in solar units. Most astronomy texts do not list the blue luminosity of the sun it turns out to be about 5 1032 ergs s1, but this is unimportant, since we are only using the blue luminosity of the sun as a unit of measure, and we are comparing M / L s that are also in such units. The dynamical masses of galaxies are usually determined from single-dish radio observations of the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen. These observations provide an estimate for the rotational velocity of the galaxy, and the mass within radius r can then be calculated by equating the gravitational force on a test particle with the mass of the test particle times its centripetal acceleration: GM m m v 2 . r2 r Rearranging this into a more relevant form, we get R opt v 2 M dyn rot , M sun G 2 1033 g 10 9

where G is the gravitational constant and R opt , the optical radius, is obtained by using the optical angular diameter of the galaxy R opt D tan(opt/2) . The M / L s that are typically used in astronomy are dynamical masses in solar
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masses within the optical radius divided by the blue luminosity in solar blue luminosities. The fact that these arent the most physical of units does not make the method invalid, but it can make it quite confusing. A typical value for M / L in these units is ve14 for spiral galaxies, but using Eq. 7 instead of Eq. 8 on a typical spiral galaxy would result in a value of ten, implying a galaxy that is more dark-matter dominated than most. Another way to calculate luminosities is to convert from magnitudes to ux ( f ) directly using log f 0.4 m C , 11 where C is a constant that depends on the lter used C is tabulated in Table I for the most commonly used optical and near-infrared lter systems. For the B lter, C B 12.97, and the resulting ux can be converted to a blue luminosity given the distance to the galaxy: L4D2 f . 12 Students can then convert to solar luminosities by dividing by 4 1033 ergs s1, or to solar blue luminosities by dividing by 5 1032 ergs s1 if they want to compute M / L for comparison with results in the astronomical literature. They can also keep L gal( B ) in ergs s1 if we want them to compare it to, for example, the H or far-infrared luminosities of the galaxy. IV. DISCUSSION Astronomers use a number of conventions that may appear to be unduly awkward to frustrated students, who often have the idea that nearly all aspects of the physical world are well understood, and that scientists have gured it all out with great ease. The truth, which is essential for students to understand if they are to understand how science is really done, is that science is done by real people, who must sometimes make arbitrary decisions about what nomenclature to use with new concepts and objects of study. For example, Minkowski originally divided supernovae into two groups: spectra from the nine known supernovae in the rst class formed a homogeneous group, while the ve known supernovae in the second class had larger individual differences in their spectra. It was useful to recognize these differences and to assign them to different categories, but Minkowski had to make an arbitrary decision about which to label type I and which to label type II. He decided to call the homogeneous group type I and the group with greater variation type II. 15 Baade called the population of old stars he identied in M31, M32, and NGC 205 type II in distinction from the populations dened by the ordinary Solar neighborhood Hertsprung Russell diagramtype I. 16 These conventions became well-established before it was discovered that type II supernovae occur when highmass population I stars explode, and that type I supernovae occur in low-mass usually population II binary systems. We therefore have the potentially confusing convention that type I supernovae occur in population II stars. Such confusing conventions are common because we do not have a copy of the owners manual for the universe; we are writing it as we go along. Scientic conventions exist because we need to have a way to communicate results with other scientists. Some conventions, such as the SI system of units,17 are the result of detailed planning, and even these are arbitrary for certain
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denitions. Most conventions, chosen before we are able to nd out all the relevant information, last for a long time because many scientists over many years have used them. When these conventions are counter-intuitive or confusing we ought to see them as teaching opportunities. Discussing the reason for an awkward convention is a way to introduce students to the history of science and to humanize the subject. The magnitude system is a convention like supernova types and stellar populations. It is somewhat confusing and physiologically inaccurate, but it has survived for about 2000 years in its basic form, and for 140 years in its present form. These 140 years of existing data are far too valuable to be abandoned lightly, although there will probably come a time when the astronomical community will decide to invest the time and energy to change optical and near-infrared brightness systems to physical units. For now, it is important to be aware of the many misconceptions that students can develop when they use the astronomical magnitude system.
Electronic mail: eschulma@nrao.edu The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. c Electronic mail: cvc3f@virginia.edu 1 N. Pogson, Magnitudes of thirty-six of the minor planets for the rst day of each month of the year 1857, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 17, 1215 1856. 2 C. Ptolemy, Almagest c. 140 A.D.; rst printed as Almagestum Cl. Ptolemei Venice, 1515. 3 J. B. Hearnshaw, Origins of the stellar magnitude scale, Sky Telesc. 84, 494499 1992. 4 C. Sterken and J. Manfroid, Astronomical Photometry Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1992. 5 A. T. Young, How we perceive star brightnesses, Sky Telesc. 79, 311 313 1990. 6 rtel, Leipzig, G. T. Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik Breitkopf und Ha 1860. 7 S. S. Stevens, To honor Fechner and repeal his law, Science 133, 8086 1961. 8 L. Berman and J. C. Evans, Exploring the Cosmos Little, Brown, Boston, 1986, 5th ed.; L. W. Fredrick and R. H. Baker, Astronomy Van Nostrand, New York, 1976, 10th ed.; R. Jastrow and M. H. Thomson, Astronomy: Fundamentals and Frontiers Wiley, New York, 1974, 2nd ed.; J. M. Pasachoff, Astronomy Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, 1995, 4th ed.; F. H. Shu, The Physical Universe University Science Books, Mill Valley, 1982; T. P. Snow, Exploring the Dynamic Universe West, St. Paul, 1988; M. Zeilik, S. A. Gregory, and E. V. P. Smith, Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, 1992, 3rd ed. These are just a few examples of astronomy textbooks that teach that the human eyes response to light is logarithmic, implying and sometimes explicitly stating that the magnitude system is physiologically accurate. We could nd no texts that said that the human eyes response to light was not logarithmic, but there are some that do not attempt to physiologically justify the logarithmic nature of the astronomical system of magnitudes. We did nd a junior-level astrophysics text D. A. Ostlie and B. W. Carroll, An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics AddisonWesley, Reading, MA, 1996, p. 66 with a simple solution to the problem of teaching students about the nonlinearity of the eyes response to brightness: In the nineteenth century, it was thought that the human eye responded to the difference in the logarithms of the brightness of two luminous objects. This theory led to a scale in which a difference of one magnitude between two stars implies a constant ratio between their brightness. 9 M. W. Richmond, R. R. Treffers, A. V. Filippenko, Y. Paik, B. Leibundgut, E. Schulman, and C. V. Cox, UBVRI photometry of SN 1993J in M81: The rst 120 days, Astron. J. 107, 10221040 1993. 10 H. L. Johnson and W. W. Morgan, On the color-magnitude diagram of the Pleiades, Astrophys. J. 114, 522543 1951; Fundamental stellar photometry for standards of spectral type on the revised system of the Yerkes spectral atlas, 117, 313352 1953.
b a

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G. E. Kron, H. S. White, and S. C. B. Gascoigne, Red and infrared magnitudes for 138 stars observed as photometric standards, Astrophys. J. 118, 502510 1953. 12 JKL was originally proposed in H. L. Johnson and R. I. Mitchell, A completely digitized multi-color photometer, Comm. Lunar Planet. Lab. 1, 7381 1962; absolute calibration for JKL was presented in H. L. Johnson, The absolute calibration of the Arizona photometry, ibid. 3, 7377 1965; the current JHKL photometric system was dened in W. Wamsteker, Standard stars and calibration for JHKLM photometry, Astron. Astrophys. 97, 329333 1981. 13 After M. V. Zombeck, Handbook of Astronomy and Astrophysics Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1990, 2nd ed., p. 100; UBRI values from C. W.

Allen, Astrophysical Quantities Athlone, London, 1973, 2nd ed., p. 202; VJHKL values from W. Wamsteker, Standard stars and Calibration for JHKLM Photometry, Astron. Astrophys. 97, 329333 1981. 14 M. S. Roberts and M. P. Haynes, Physical parameters along the Hubble sequence, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 32, 115152 1994. 15 R. Minkowski, Spectra of supernovae, Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 53, 224 225 1941. 16 W. Baade, The resolution of Messier 32, NGC 205, and the central region of the Andromeda nebula, Astrophys. J. 100, 137146 1944. 17 B. N. Taylor, The International System of Units (SI) USGPO, Washington, DC, 1991.

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