Quote:
Up for grabs:
George:
If Rigel were repositioned to Sirius, how much brighter would it appear (in mag. and compared to the moon)?
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Well obviously that would depend on how accurately we can measure the distance to Rigel. Quick Googling results in distances varying from 700 to 1400 lightyears. If you use wikipedia's numbers: 773 ly = 237 parsecs you get an absolute magnitude of -6.7
If Rigel were the same distance as Sirius (2.6 parsecs), then its apparent magnitude would be around -9.6
The full moon is about -12.6 or about 16 times brighter.