Eli5: Shouldn’t light from distant stars and galaxies appear to be continuously blinking by tons of space debri constantly moving between it and us through the Billions or year?

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Hopefully the question makes sense. But it seems like we are always getting such great photos of these objects. You would think that one day you may be able to see a galaxy; while the next it may be completely obstructed by another object that is closer to earth but still thousands to millions of light years away.

In: Planetary Science

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You’re vastly underestimating how empty space is. And a small piece of debris isn’t going to do anything measurable. It takes an immensely sensitive telescope pointed at a star to detect a miniscule dip in light *from an entire planet* passing in front of it. See the Kepler mission.

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