The Astronomical Society of the Toms River Area
ASTRA club message board

Incandescent lamps are not only good sources of electromagnetic energy radiations but their operating temperatures are comparable to the temperatures of stars also. These features can be exploited to teach apparent magnitude scale both theoretically and experimentally. The numerical illustrations presented corresponding to 10,100,1000 and 10000 W lamps suggest that these lamps if placed on the surface of the new moon, will not be visible to naked eyes but, they can be detected by Hubble telescope. These lamps can be observed up to maximum distances of 25,120,430 and 1600 km, respectively, in view of the fact that the apparent magnitudes will approach the value ~6, the upper limit of human perception; these predictions may be tested by students through experiments.