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nit

See also nat, for the unit of information.

A unit of luminance in the meter-kilogram-second system of units, = 1 candela per square meter. Symbol, nt. The nit is more common in the United States than elsewhere, most preferring candelas per square meter.

A good LCD computer monitor has a brightness of about 250 nits. The color grading display at Pixar has “well above a thousand nits”¹.

1. Pixar engineer Dominic Glynn, quoted in Adam Rogers, Out of Sight, Wired, May 2021, page 20.

International Commission on Illumination.
Proceedings, session 11, page 145 (1948).