On a more serious note, it really makes sense, even without the math, that you wouldn’t see much from inside a nebula. When we photograph these using long exposures and special filters, it appears as a ring, but it’s really a spheroid shell, and we only see the edges where it’s the thickest. The shell’s still there within the image of the ring, but it’s not visible. (I think of this as where it would be densest if we compressed it into a 2-D plane perpendicular to the line of sight, which is kind of what a photo of a tenuous nebula would tend to be.) Also, turn the pic of the Eye of God 90° and it looks for like the Eye of Sauron. ~_^

My pick for star to visit would be… Betelgeuse comes to mind first, but at the point where it goes supernova. Of course, that’s up-close study of it as it’s entering the end of its life, and then time-dilated, invulnerable ship to study the supernova itself over the course of however long it takes to get good readings of all of what’s going on. (Since this journey is fiction, I decided I’m an Astronomer studying the hard data up close and personal, with all the gear that can survive a supernova and gather data without getting destroyed in the process.) It’ll make a spectacular show for you us Earthlings when it goes.

The telescope objective collects more light, but as magnification goes up, it spreads that light over a larger area. When the magnification equals about 1/7th the aperture in millimeters, the image will be as bright as it can be – pretty much equal to naked eye brightness, with light loss due to scattering and absorption subtracted.

This is true of any extended object, including nebulae, planets, and most galaxies. Only when the image source is too small to be resolved, and appears to be a point, will the telescope actually make it brighter. That’s the case with stars, where all the additional light collected (over the naked eye) is focused on the same area, instead of being spread out. Increasing magnification actually makes the star brighter, too, since the atmosphere ( a very dim extended image) becomes darker. Until your aperture goes so high that the star becomes resolved into a disc, that is. After that, increases in aperture no longer make the star brighter than the largest aperture that still leaves it a point source.

I’m sure Phil knows all this, but his comment in the video about collecting more light to make things brighter leaves the wrong impression.

The real secret to making nebulae and other extended objects fantastically bright and interesting to look at is extended exposure, as someone else pointed out. Our eyes don’t work that way.

As for the universe “not being made to make us happy” – made implies a maker and I’m not sure that’s a path you really want to go down!

“the universe isn’t built to make us happy”

Then we should remake it in our image. I’ll start by modifying my little corner of reality. I’ll just twaek this- oops! I collapsed the false vacuum. Oh sh-

[NO CARRIER]