Antoniseb - sir - you are very right.

You don't actually have to turn the Sun "off", you can just go a couple of light years away into deep space (from where the Sun looks just like another star) and take a measurement of the cosmic night sky.

Our man - captain Ahab, no, that should be Ahad, did this in his night sky paper by using some magnitude adding equations. He came to a net figure of -6.5 or roughly 1/300th of a full moon ("Ahad's constant"). His workings are here:

http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/rest...terstellar.html

So there's a new constant that will be added to the Astronomy books, hopefully soon.
Wanna see what the Sun looks like from Alpha Centauri? Here's a sim:

http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/sunb...brightness.html

It's quite a humbling thought to know that our majestic Sun, the giver and sustainer of all life to our planet and all that we ever experienced and knew about, could be cast aside into no more than a bright twinkling dot of starry light, just like that. I can't wait to go on a voyage to the stars...

Jav