If one appears brighter than m of 1 call it magnitude 0. If one appears dimmer than m of 5 call it magnitude 6. Describe what happened to the magnitudes of the flashlights that we moved closer to us. Describe what happened to the magnitudes of the flashlights that we moved farther away from us. The magnitudes we get for the 12 flashlights we moved are called absolute magnitudes because all of the flashlights were all 10 parsecs away.
Astronomers do the same thing for stars.
They divide the stars they can see with their eye into 5 classes. Since all the stars are not at the same distances these magnitudes are called apparent magnitudes. designated by m. While we can't actually move all stars to 10 parsecs away to get their absolute magnitudes, we can mathematically figure out what their magnitude would be if we did move them as long as we know the distance to the star. The distance we chose to move them to is 10 parsecs. The magnitude a star would have if it was moved to a distance of 10 parsecs is called its absolute magnitude.