How come we perceive sunlight as essentially being invisible until we split it down into seperate wavelengths?

Question

We don’t see light until it’s reflected off something and depending on what the thing is, it absorbs some wavelengths and not others and that’s how we perceive colours. But why? How come we just don’t see all light all the time (when exposed to it)?

In: Physics

Answer 1

We see sunlight when it hits our eyes. You can definitely see direct sunlight, ie when it doesn’t reflect off of something – when you look directly at the sun.

We don’t see random rays of light all the time because most of them don’t reach our eyes.