How come outer space isn't light, when it has all of those stars and suns to light it up?

Question

very curious...

Answer 1

Light is subject to the inverse square law. This means the intensity of light from an object is inversely proportional to the square of its distance. In other words, given two objects of the same brightness, if you move one twice as far away from an observer as the first, it appears to be just 1/4 as bright. Move it 3 times as far away, now it's just 1/9th as bright. 4 times, 1/16th, and so on.

Many of the stars in our galaxy are as bright or brighter than our sun, if they were as close as our sun. But the stars are very, very, very far away, so they're too dim to be seen except at night when the sky is dark.

Incidentally, space is fairly bright, at least in this vicinity of the solar system. An object in orbit around the Earth receives 30% more sunlight than an object on the surface. That's because there's no atmosphere to scatter light away. If you look at photos of astronauts in orbit, you can see they're well lit without any kind of artificial light source. However, you'll also notice their shadows are very dark; again, this is because without an atmosphere scatter light, there is no ambient light effect to brighten shadows as we're accustomed to here on the surface.

Answer 2

You sort of answered your own question. It isn't really dark, and that is because there are so many light sources. We just happen to live extraordinarily close to one star (the sun) and rather far away from all the others. So, relative to our daylight, our night is dark and the sky seems comparatively black. But if you were able to actually be in space, outside our atmosphere (which interferes with light reaching us and reflects the ambient light we are generating on earth, thereby lessening the contrast we might otherwise see between stars and space), and look away from the sun, the sky would seem almost solid with stars. The nearest thing to this experience on earth is to go to a high point on earth with a dry climate very far away from any cities or other sources of light and look into the sky. People who live in these places already know this. The number of stars you see is far far greater. The sky is not bright, but seems very dense with stars. It looks entirely different from what we might see in populated parts of the planet.

Answer 3

When looking at the night sky, remember each of those objects
are thousands of lightyears apart. Take our own solar syustem for example, on pluto the sun would be a mere speck of light in the sky. The further from center of the universe you get, the further the gallixies are apart.

Answer 4

There is very little out in space to scatter the light. Therefore it looks dark with little points of light.

Kind of like a dark room with a flashlight, there is the beam and it doesn't spread out much (it does some due to the air molecules but you can see how the light from those stars reacts).

Answer 5

welll light from there stars an suns produce only a limited amount of light while the universe is vast and also there is no much of particles in space to scatter there light particles so they just travell in a straight line

Answer 6

Sunlight is scattered by the air molecules in our atmosphere. In outer space, there's no air, so you canonly see the distant pinpoints of the stars.

Answer 7

all of the layers of the atmosphere amplify the light of the sun. there is so much space in space that no matter how many stars there are it couldent light it up. and i don think there is anything to light up anyways. the ozone layer makes the sky blue, but there is not ozone in space so i dont think there is anything to make color out there.

Answer 8

Our eyes see black (dark) since our eye's aren't exposed long enough to collect light from the 'dark sky'. With a big telescope you have make sure you expose your ccd long enough to make your object's light count larger that of the night sky.

Answer 9

via fact there is no longer something there. easy that enters your eye could the two come without delay from a resource, such via fact the solar, or is scattered from air molecules, or is contemplated from some thing, such via fact the Moon. interior the absence of any of those issues interior the course, there can not be easy.

Answer 10

There is very little out there besides space. Only matter reflects light.