Why are some stars brighter than others?

When we look at the night sky, we see plenty of stars, but can hardly differentiate one from another. Some may appear bigger, and some brighter than the other stars. So, "Why are some stars brighter than others? ". Let's explore!

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was the first to make a catalog of stars according to their brightness. Basically, he looked at the stars in the sky and classified them by how bright they appear — the brightest stars were 'magnitude 1', the next brightest were 'magnitude 2', etc., down to 'magnitude 6', which were the faintest stars he could see.

Human eyes, however are not very discerning. Large differences in brightness actually appear much smaller using this scale. Light-sensitive charged-coupled devices (CCDs) inside digital cameras measure the amount of light coming from stars, and can provide a more precise definition of brightness.

One way of recognizing stars are from their spectra, by studying the light emitted. By studying the details of the spectrum of light from the stars, astronomers have found that stars range from blue to red. Our Sun is yellow, so it ranges in the middle of the series. Blue stars are very hot, having a surface temperature of 50,000 degree Celsius, or more. The Sun is about 6,000 degree, and red stars are comparatively cooler, with a surface temperature of 3,5000 C. The brightness of a star is called its magnitude. Magnitude is denoted by numbers. The larger the number, the lesser will be the magnitude. Depending on their magnitude some stars appear brighter to us than others do.

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