The solar luminosity (L☉) is a unit of radiant flux (power emitted in the form of photons) conventionally used by astronomers to measure the luminosity of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects in terms of the output of the Sun.
One nominal solar luminosity is defined by the International Astronomical Union to be 3.828×10 W. This corresponds almost exactly to a bolometric absolute magnitude of +4.74.
This is a list of stars arranged by their absolute magnitude – their intrinsic stellar luminosity. This cannot be observed directly, so instead must be calculated from the apparent magnitude (the brightness as seen from Earth), the distance to each star, and a correction for interstellar extinction. The entries in the list below are further corrected to provide the bolometric magnitude, i.e., integrated over all wavelengths; this relies upon measurements in multiple photometric filters and extrapolation of the stellar spectrum based on the stellar spectral type and/or effective temperature.
Entries give the bolometric luminosity in multiples of the luminosity of the Sun (L☉) and the bolometric absolute magnitude. As with all magnitude systems in astronomy, the latter scale is logarithmic and inverted i.e., more negative numbers are more luminous.