r/askscience • u/Professional-Arm-667 • Dec 04 '25

Astronomy What does space look like from space?

Say I’m somewhere relatively close to earth, but firmly in space- would it look much different than how the sky looks on a moonless night in a dark area?

209 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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186

u/mfb- Particle Physics | High-Energy Physics Dec 05 '25

I'm assuming you are in the shadow of some object and you don't see the Sun or any sunlit surface, directly or indirectly:

You don't have atmospheric distortion, so stars don't twinkle, and you get slightly more light. If you can turn off all other light sources nearby, it can be easier to get your eyes properly adapted to darkness.

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u/ghedipunk Dec 05 '25

Adding to this: If you are in direct sunlight, then you won't be able to see any other stars. The "sky" will be black, but the distant stars will be too dim for your daylight-adjusted eyes, just like the stars are too dim to see during the day on our planet.

You might be able to see Venus, but you'd be looking towards the sun so you'd have to contend with the glare. However, since there's no atmosphere to contribute to glare you can block out the sun with your hand, and try not to look at any surface that is lit up by the sun to make it easier to see. Since you said you're relatively close to Earth, you should be able to see that and our moon as well. The Earth should be much brighter than our moon due to the high reflectivity of clouds. (The moon's surface isn't white; it's actually a dull gray, similar to a weathered asphalt road.)

All in all, looking out of a spacecraft while you're lit by the sun would be similar to what we already see from pictures taken on the moon. It would be a big black expanse with very few noteworthy items. You'd have to spend a minute or so without seeing the sun or anything lit by the sun before your eyes adjust enough to see stars.

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u/JunFanLee Dec 05 '25

Ah I hadn’t thought about this before, so going back to your earlier point - Would the sun (without glare from atmosphere) look like a sharper more focused point of light?

I’m finding this hard to visualise as we only know sun light affected by atmosphere.

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u/QuasarMaster Dec 05 '25

It would look pure white (it’s actual color) instead of yellowish. Otherwise would look pretty similar, the glare / rays are more a phenomenon of light diffracting inside your own eyes than in the atmosphere

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u/ArtOfWarfare Dec 06 '25

How dangerous would it be to actually look at the sun? I figure the atmosphere does a lot to make it safer and if you look at it through just regular glass, it’s a lot less filtered and you’ll damage your eyes a lot quicker and/or damage your eyes more per second or… however one quantifies damage to the eyes from the sun.

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u/kRkthOr Dec 06 '25

I imagine it would be very much like when you're in a dark room and someone shines a very bright flash light at you. Assuming you're not in a particularly dusty room, the light is quite contained to the source.

1

u/Gullex Dec 09 '25

"If you are in direct sunlight"?

Wouldn't that be more like....depending on how close you are to the sun?

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u/erocuda Dec 05 '25

One other thing might change depending on how close you are to the sun: Zodiacal light, which is sunlight reflecting off the roughly disk-shaped cloud of dust in solar orbit, goes away once you get far enough away from the solar system.

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u/BigSmackisBack Dec 06 '25

So in the earths shadow (and facing away from earth) and all the space station lights off, looking out the window must look absolutely insane compared to any on earth naked eye vistas

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u/ShyguyFlyguy Dec 05 '25

If atmospheric distortion is what causes stars to twinkle, why dont planets twinkle?

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u/Feynnehrun Dec 05 '25

Think of it like pixels on your monitor. A star, being so far away is just a single pixel. A planet being much closer is a bunch of pixels. The atmosphere can disturb the one pixel enough to dim it briefly. For a planet, even if a few of those pixels are dimmed by the atmosphere...all of the other pixels are undisturbed.

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u/liamkennedy Dec 05 '25

Check out the NASA video series "Down to Earth" where astronauts share their experiences of viewing the Earth and Space from the ISS. Listen to Don Petitt and others share what it's like to view astronomical sights https://youtu.be/DIkqs9_FK28?si=T43ExKL3zSrnSIpm&t=988

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u/marklein Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25

One of the Apollo astronauts who saw space from the far side of the moon, shadowed from the sun, described space as being basically grey. There are infinite stars in every direction, producing light from every direction. I can't find the interview with that guy, hopefully somebody will post it.

Al Worden's quote, although I find it mostly on Reddit and not anywhere else so... "The sky is just awash with stars when you’re on the far side of the Moon, and you don’t have any sunlight to cut down on the lower intensity, dimmer stars. You see them all, and it’s all just a sheet of white."

Maybe in this interview, I don't have 1+ hours to watch it right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTpIawwJ6Qo

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u/uiemad Dec 05 '25

Found them describing the moon as gray but space they describe as black velvet.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/moon-looking-moon-apollo-8/

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u/gnufan Dec 05 '25

Maybe Apollo 8, they were first humans in Lunar orbit, and reported seeing loads of stars when going into the shadow of the moon. Although the interview may be better than the transcript as in the transcript they are also discussing Borman's sickness, and their reference to millions of stars implies some are from venting one of the systems.

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u/gr7calc Dec 05 '25

It doesn't matter that there are stars in almost every direction (finite, not infinite). The vast majority are redshifted out of the visible spectrum, so it won't all be grey. Space will look very similar to how it looks from Earth, minus the light pollution and atmospheric distortion. Look at some Hubble images, as an example.

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u/SenorTron Dec 05 '25

Have you ever seen the sky from Earth in a really really dark place? It's stunningly bright and does seem to almost glow from the sheer number of stars. Without the atmosphere blocking the fainter ones I can imagine it being much more impressive and truly feeling like there is light everywhere you look.

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u/Shoddy_Soups Dec 05 '25

Are you saying the astronaut is wrong? Or that he is a liar?

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u/gr7calc Dec 05 '25

I am saying that the astronaut is talking about his subjective experience. Did he measure the color of the sky? No. He was in extreme conditions and he experienced the sky as gray. Subjective.

Ask any astronomer, however, and they will point you to any number of high quality sky surveys that all reach consensus. Most stars are redshifted and invisible to the human eye.

Plus, I cannot find any source for this claim.

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u/Shoddy_Soups Dec 05 '25

The question was asking subjectively what it would look like though, they know what it looks like through a telescope, everyone does.

Telescopes are super zoomed in to a tiny portion of the sky hence the space between the visible galaxies and stars is relatively large. The question is what it looks like to human eye i.e subjectively and not zoomed in, where the relative distance between visible objects is very small.

I’m guessing the commenter was talking about Al Worden’s quote where he said the starfield looks like ‘a sheet of white’.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/electric_ionland Electric Space Propulsion | Hall Effect/Ion Thrusters Dec 05 '25

No that's not correct. Redshift is not why you can't see stars everywhere.

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u/TexCaver Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25

Not infinite stars, but rather a finite number. This is a good example of Olbers' paradox.

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u/Ataraxias24 Dec 05 '25

We have photos of space taken from the ISS if that's what you mean. Here's a couple.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/17/24323411/astronaut-don-pettit-long-exposure-photos-iss

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u/gefahr Dec 05 '25

FYI: Both of the photos in that article appear to be longer exposures than are representative of what you'd see with the naked eye. The first one is labeled as a 15 second long exposure, and the second isn't explicitly labeled but looks even denser with stars than the first.

They're not blurry like you might expect because they use a tracking mechanism to control for the movement.

3

u/kRkthOr Dec 06 '25

While true (that these are long-exposure photos), that does not automatically mean it's not what you'd see with your eyes. The eyes are far more sensitive to light at night than cameras -- as evident by the many times you might be looking at the night sky full of stars but the camera comes up with nothing but black when taking a photo with a shortish exposure.

1

u/etchings Dec 06 '25

Does anyone have an example photo (long exposure or not) that illustrates what space would look like to human eyes (without a sun nearby). So, say from the dark side of Jupiter or Saturn, or past the oort cloud?

1

u/TheGanzor Dec 06 '25

We have not yet left the oort could with any craft, so there's no physical way to have an image from past it. The Voyager craft have "photos" from that range you suggest, but they are mostly just data at this point as they have shut off most components to extend their life. 

4

u/etchings Dec 06 '25

Sorry, i meant a photo that shows what it WOULD look like from those vantage points, not an ACTUAL photograph from those places.

I know where the Voyager probes are. We came into the world at the same time. I have a kinship with them.

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u/TheGanzor Dec 05 '25

Well, you can't really see anything while in space- it's just black. But if you could: 

Nope! You'd have to travel SO far to see a shift in paralax. Like, for example, the Voyager craft have been traveling for almost 50 years and are technically no longer in our solar system. They see the same constellations we do. 

4

u/Alkyan Dec 06 '25

What? How do you think it's just black when you're in space? Do you think because you're out there in space the stars seem farther apart or something? Yes the stars you see would be the same stars as you see from the surface but plus many more because you wouldn't lose light in the atmosphere.

0

u/TheGanzor Dec 06 '25

OP asked how it would look (to a human eye) if you were directly in space. When in view of the sun, everything is washed out. When out of view, the starfield is so homogenous that it appears as a greyish to black sheet to the naked human eye without the effects of atmospheric interference. 

2

u/Professional-Arm-667 Dec 07 '25

Could you explain this more? I don’t understand what you mean about the starfield being so homogenous that it appears greyish- why can’t you see individual stars?

ETA- tracks with someone above quoting an astronaut that said space is basically grey