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A spectrograph measures how bright a star is at any given wavelength.
It is important to point out that apparent magnitude doesn't measure how bright objects actually are; it measures how bright they appear to us, which also depends on how close they are.
(That's why the Sun's apparent magnitude is so extreme, even though it is really just a normal star). We can also define something called "absolute magnitude" which measures how bright objects actually are -- it is defined as the apparent magnitude that an object would have if it were located at a distance of 10 parsecs from us.
That allows light from 130 different targets to be captured and sent separately to a spectrograph, which measures how bright they are at different wavelengths.
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However, since astronomers are basically measuring how bright galaxies are, we are biased to finding the brightest things, which are also the most massive things.
And instead of distance, astronomers look at objects of known power inside the galaxies (typically type 1a supernovae) and measure how bright they appear.
So the way we find that the Sun has a visual magnitude of -26.74 is that we measure how bright it appears from Earth and observe that we receive around 51 billion times as much light from the Sun as we do from Vega.
So we don't measure the Universe's expansion; we measure how bright or how big objects appear to be.
As a result, all type Ia supernovae should shine equally brightly, which means that astronomers can judge how far away they are by measuring how bright they appear in the sky.
The frequency of these pulses is related to the star's intrinsic brightness, so by measuring its pulse, you find out how bright it is.
If you can measure the distance to that star, its temperature, and how bright it appears, you can know its radius (and hence, its size) just by applying the laws of physics.
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Justyna Jupowicz-Kozak
CEO of Professional Science Editing for Scientists @ prosciediting.com