If light pollution raises the perceived sky background brightness to magnitude 3.0, what happens to a magnitude 5.5 star?

Answer

It effectively disappears against the brighter curtain

The visibility of a star is contingent on the contrast between its inherent brightness (signal) and the brightness of the sky surrounding it (noise or interference). A star of visual magnitude 5.5 is already quite faint, barely visible under good conditions. If light pollution raises the ambient sky background to the equivalent of a magnitude 3.0 object—which is significantly brighter than the threshold for naked-eye visibility—the faint signal from the 5.5 magnitude star cannot be resolved by the human eye. The visual contrast mechanism fails because the added artificial light interference obscures the faint point of light, making the star effectively vanish against the glowing curtain of the sky.

If light pollution raises the perceived sky background brightness to magnitude 3.0, what happens to a magnitude 5.5 star?

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