What is the difference between absolute magnitude and apparent magnitude?

Apparent magnitude is how bright the star appears from Earth.

Absolute magnitude is how bright the star appears at a standard distance of 32.6 light-years.

The apparent magnitude of an object only tells us how bright an object appears from Earth. It does not tell us how bright the object is compared to other objects in the universe ... Absolute magnitude is defined to be the apparent magnitude an object would have if it were located at a distance of 10 parsecs.