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In astronomy, surface brightness (SB) quantifies the apparent brightness or flux density per unit angular area of a spatially extended object such as a galaxy or nebula, or of the night sky background. An object's surface brightness depends on its surface luminosity density, i.e., its luminosity emitted per unit surface area.
Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic energy per unit time, and is synonymous with the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In astronomy , luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a star , galaxy , or other astronomical objects .
An object's surface brightness is its brightness per unit solid angle as seen in projection on the sky, and measurement of surface brightness is known as surface photometry. [9] A common application would be measurement of a galaxy's surface brightness profile, meaning its surface brightness as a function of distance from the galaxy's center.
Surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) is a secondary distance indicator used to estimate distances to galaxies. It is useful to 100 Mpc ( parsec ). The method measures the variance in a galaxy's light distribution arising from fluctuations in the numbers of and luminosities of individual stars per resolution element.
(The S 10 unit is defined as the surface brightness of a star whose V-magnitude is 10 and whose light is smeared over one square degree, or 27.78 mag arcsec −2.) The total sky brightness in zenith is therefore ~220 S 10 or 21.9 mag/arcsec² in the V-band. Note that the contributions from Airglow and Zodiacal light vary with the time of year ...
Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function 0.3 15.4 ± 1.1 50 Globular Cluster Luminosity Function 0.4 18.8 ± 3.8 50 Surface Brightness Fluctuations 0.3 15.9 ± 0.9 50 Sigma-D relation 0.5 16.8 ± 2.4 > 100 Type Ia Supernovae 0.10 19.4 ± 5.0 > 1000
Illuminance diagram with units and terminology. In photometry, illuminance is the total luminous flux incident on a surface, per unit area. [1] It is a measure of how much the incident light illuminates the surface, wavelength-weighted by the luminosity function to correlate with human brightness perception. [2]
Thus, from the Stefan–Boltzmann law, the luminosity is related to the surface temperature T S, and through it to the color of the star, by = where σ B is Stefan–Boltzmann constant, 5.67 × 10 −8 W m −2 K −4. The luminosity is equal to the total energy produced by the star per unit time.