Luminosity function (astronomy)

In astronomy, a luminosity function gives the number of stars or galaxies per luminosity interval. Luminosity functions are used to study the properties of large groups or classes of objects, such as the stars in clusters or the galaxies in the Local Group. Note that the term "function" is slightly misleading, and the luminosity function might better be described as a luminosity distribution. Given a luminosity as input, the luminosity function essentially returns the abundance of objects with that luminosity (specifically, number density per luminosity interval).