Eli5: Why do planets look like stars?
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Planets reflect some light back out into space. Once you get far enough away you can no longer make out any details and the planets just look like a point of light in the darkness.
Some things to note though. Mars is about 200 million miles away from us. Venus is 33 million miles away. A lightyear, the distance light travels over one year, is 6 trillion miles. The nearest star is over 4 lightyears away and yet shines just as brightly as these planets. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is over 2.5 Million *lightyears* away, also shines brightly in the night sky, looking like just a single star. Our neighboring planets shine like stars because they are so close compared to the incredibly vast distances the light from neighboring stars or galaxies have to travel for the faint remnants of their light to reach us.
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