The Greek astronomer Hipparchus produced a catalogue which noted the apparent brightness of stars in the second century BCE. In the second century CE the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy classified stars on a six-point scale, and originated the term magnitude. To the unaided eye, a more prominent star such as Sirius or Arcturus appears larger than a less prominent star such as Mizar, which in turn appears larger than a truly faint star such as Alcor. In 1736, the mathematician John Keill described the ancient naked-eye magnitude system in this way: