How much more glorious is the celestial kingdom than the terrestrial? D&C 76 likens the difference between the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial Kingdoms to the difference between the sun, moon, and stars respectively. We can intuit this by sight, of course, but how much of a difference is this numerically? 

Thankfully, astronomy has a rigorous concept that measures how bright celestial objects are to each other: apparent magnitude (all quotes and numbers are from the Wikipedia article).

“The scale is reverse logarithmic: the brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. A difference of 1.0 in magnitude corresponds to the brightness ratio of, or about 2.512. For example, a magnitude 2.0 star is 2.512 times as bright as a magnitude 3.0 star, 6.31 times as bright as a magnitude 4.0 star, and precisely 100 times as bright as a magnitude 7.0 star.”

On this scale, a sun during day from the earth is –26.83. The full moon is -12.60, or about 400,000x less bright than the sun. 

Stars, of course, vary from star to star, as it discusses in D&C 76, implying that different telestial inhabitants vary in glory like stars vary from each other. 

Sirius, the brightest star (and the only one we can see from our porch just outside of DC) is -1.4. So assuming that is the most glorious telestial denizen, that equals (check my math, but I think I’m right): 

(-1.4)-(-12.6)=11.2

10^(.4*11.2)=30,199.52

So by these metrics the Celestial Kingdom if 400,000x more glorious than the terrestrial. While the terrestrial is ~30,000x more glorious than the most glorious telestial inhabitant. So that means that the celestial kingdom is about 12 billion times as glorious as the telestial (depending on rounding). And when we consider that the baseline reference point of the telestial kingdom is described as so glorious that is “surpasses all understanding” the grandeur of the restored gospel’s cosmology becomes apparent. It’s like if a ten year old said “imagine something more [glorious] then anything you can imagine….now times it by 12 billion!”

 Of course, in discussing these numbers I’m not making any claim to precision. It’s likely the sun, moon, and star comparison is largely a beautiful, general point of comparison for the differences. Still, it’s fun to think through the magnitude of these differences and what they entail if we really buckle down on the astronomical metaphor.