eli5: How are we accurately able to study far off cosmic objects if our primary source of information is from light (that sometimes has traveled to us for 1000’s of years). Am I missing something?

Question

eli5: How are we accurately able to study far off cosmic objects if our primary source of information is from light (that sometimes has traveled to us for 1000’s of years). Am I missing something?

In: 8

Answer 1

You are correct.

I think the bit that is confusing you is “how can I understand something now if I can only see it 1000 years ago?”

Essentially we can only understand what something was like 1000 years ago (assuming it’s 1000 lightyears away).