Eli5 why are you able to see lights far away but the light it projects doesn’t go nearly as far? (Car lights, street lights, etc)
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For starters, if I shine a light at you and you are 100 meters away, that’s only 100 meters it has to travel for you to see it.
If it then bounces back from you, so that I can see it (and therefore see you), thats another 100m. That’s 200m now.
The light weakened on its way to you, by bouncing into particles and whatnot, and then kept weakening on its way back to me.
On top of that, not all the light is going to be bouncing back in the first place, unless you happen to be a perfect mirror.
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