The sun warms up our planet but space is cold. If I lit a candle and stood 20 feet away, I could see the light but not feel the warmth. So, why do we feel warmth from the sun but space isn’t warmed by it?
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It is and isn’t, it’s as extreme as you are imagining.
The difference between “sun” and “shade” for the ISS is roughly *500 degrees F.*
So if you’re just floating in a space suit and facing the sun, the sun-side of your suit is 250F, behind you the dark side of your suit is -250F.
The essence of your confusion is space is empty and “having a temperature” implies you have an *object that is warm.* Since space is, be definition, the absence of an object, it can’t be warm because there is nothing there to ‘make warm’ in the first place (unless it’s you in your space suit).
This goes back to middle-school science class but heat travels from object to object in a few different ways but two main ones involve physical contact between objects, since you’re not touching the sun or the candle, that’s not what’s happening here. The third way is through radiation, energy zipping through the air as light. Both the sun and the candle are bright because they are giving off light radiation and that will warm you if it touches you. Of course a tiny candle doesn’t “feel warm” the same way the sun does on a bright spring morning but that’s mainly an issue of scale, a tiny little flame vs. a celestial object.
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