# Are there any places in deep space where humans wouldn't see anything?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 17, 2017, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490 "2017-07-17T13:59:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490/1 "2017-07-17T13:59:33Z")

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By “deep space” I mean “not inside a black hole or underground on a rocky planet” or other types of nitpicking. Are there any supervoids that contain places that are several million light years from the nearest galaxy, and so an astronaut would not be able to see anything (other than themselves/and or spacecraft) with their naked eye? I notice that the Andromeda galaxy is more than a million LY away but is magnitude 3 and so could be even farther away and still be visible, but the supervoids can be _hundreds of millions_ of LY across, but also aren’t completely empty.

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**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490/2 "2017-07-17T14:25:16Z")

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> [@Ludovic](#):
>
> Are there any supervoids that contain places that are several million light years from the nearest galaxy, and so an astronaut would not be able to see anything (other than themselves/and or spacecraft) with their naked eye?

There are in fact [voids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_(astronomy)) in the universe (or cosmic voids or supervoids). The voids aren’t completely free of galaxies, but there are far fewer than in the [filaments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_filament) so I suspect you could find a place that’s a million light years away from the nearest galaxy.

But if you don’t want to go that far, I suspect it’s pretty dark inside a [dark nebula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_nebula) (dust cloud).

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**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490/3 "2017-07-17T20:52:38Z")

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I wasn’t sure if I should include dust clouds or not, since you could be pretty alone in space and yet still inside one. I guess only objects that are at least 1 LY away should count for my question (to pick an arbitrary distance). So a dust cloud that totally surrounds a 1 LY sphere would count 🙂

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-places-in-deep-space-where-humans-wouldnt-see-anything/791490/4 "2017-07-17T21:34:55Z")

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Oh, they’re much bigger than that. The Coalsack Nebula, for instance, is about 30 ly across.