[Red Badger]

I’ve never really understood the ‘magnitude thingy’. Especially when they throw in a negative one...............

[outofsalt]

The more negative the number the brighter the object. Sirius, the dog star which follows Orion the hunter is the brightest star in the sky (-1.44). It outshines everything but Venus, the moon and the sun. The naked eye can't see things above +5.

[KarlInOhio]

The Stellar Magnitude System

A good article on where magnitudes 1 bright through 6 dim came from, how it got extended for even dimmer stars which required a telescope to see and how the whole system was given more precision.