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How does weight differ from mass in a gravitational field?

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gravitational lens — gravity A galactic cluster, about five billion light-years away, produces a tremendous gravitational field that “bends” light around it. This lens produces multiple copies of a blue galaxy about twice as distant. Four images are visible in a circle surrounding the lens; a fifth is visible near the center of the picture, which was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

In physics, it is a common misconception to use the terms mass and weight interchangeably; however, they represent distinct physical concepts.

Mass is an intrinsic property of an object that quantifies the amount of matter it contains by measuring its inertia. It remains constant regardless of an object's location in the universe, as it is not influenced by external gravitational forces.12

In contrast, weight is a measure of the gravitational force acting on an object. It is defined as the product of an object's mass and the local gravitational field strength (or acceleration of gravity) at its specific location. Because weight depends on the strength of the gravitational field, it varies depending on where an object is located. For example, an object weighs less on the Moon than on Earth due to the Moon's weaker gravity, even though the object's mass remains identical. While mass is measured in kilograms, weight is a force measured in newtons.123