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For a very rough guideline using healthy/corrected eyes adjusted to the dark, around how bright should an object be to expect it to be visible?

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  • $\begingroup$ Not really an answer, but maybe look at the resources mentioned in stellarium.sourcearchive.com/documentation/0.10.2/… $\endgroup$
    – user21
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 17:12
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    $\begingroup$ Whoever voted to close this should explain what details are needed to improve it. $\endgroup$
    – Greg Miller
    Commented Aug 26, 2022 at 19:14

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Wikipedia's page on the Bortle Scale claims the full moon at a dark site is roughly equivalent to the light pollution at the urban/suburban transition which means you could see stars with an naked-eye limiting magnitude (NELM) 4.6-5.0

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It may shave off 1 or 2 magnitudes, but it depends on many factors: nature of the object (star, nebula, galaxy), altitude (higher altitude has less light scatter), transparency, etc. There's no One Single Answer To Rule Them All.

Light pollution from artificial sources has a greater impact in most cases.

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  • $\begingroup$ Okay, I was only considering clear skies and away from a city at low altitudes (for shooting stars or a meteor shower). It sounds like this is a bad question, so I'll delete it if you agree. $\endgroup$
    – Louis Waweru
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 1:55

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