At a late time, the magnitudes of the objects are SN V = 16.4 P V = 21.1 To compute the ratio of their apparent brightness, we calculate intensity of SN -0.4 * (16.4 - 21.1) ----------------- = 10 intensity of P = 76 So at this time, the SN is about 76 times brighter than star P in the V-band. That means that if one collects the light from both stars, but attributes all the light to the SN, one will end up with an error of about 1/76, or about 1.3 percent = 0.013 mag.