What is the difference between Luminosity and Brightness?

Luminosity and brightness are words connected to light but have different meanings. Luminosity refers to the amount of light that is emitted from a specific light source. It can be measured in joules per second or watts. An example of this is our sun has a luminosity of 3.828 x 10²â¶ W; this shows how authoritative this light source is. You can also notice the higher the watts of a light bulb, the greater the amount of light it emits.

Brightness, on the other hand, refers to the amount of light a light source manifested. It is usually expressed in Lumens and denotes the nearer you are from the light source, the brighter the area you are in a while, the farther you are from the source of light, you will only receive a little amount of it.

Luminosity is the term used to describe the rate at which a star radiates energy in all directions. Astronomers use this term to express the level of brightness of objects. It describes planetary brightness. Luminosity also means the amount of light that is emitted from a source of light.

However, brightness is the effect of light emitted on an illuminated area. The greater the luminosity of an object the brighter the object appears. If an object is bright, it has a high luminosity and if brightness is dim, luminosity is low.

Luminosity and Brightness are two terms that are talking about light. If you want to measure the amount of light being generated from a source of light, or you want to describe the effect of the light generated, you need to have the understanding of the two terms. Luminosity is not totally the same as Brightness. Luminosity is simply talking about the amount of light emitted from a source of light like sun or light bulb.

For example, the amount of light emitted on a sunny day will be quite higher than the one emitted on a very cool day. Brightness, on the other hand, is talking about the effect of the light received by the illuminated area. We can as well say, the brightness of the light depends on the luminosity of the light emitted. When the light emitted is high, the brightness will also go up and vice versa. Also, the values of the light received (brightness) can be measured using lumens, while the unit of luminosity is candela per square meter.