As a science teacher I would take my students out one night and tell them what they see in the sky is not actually there. And, as they see it, was never what they see.
Simply because the light that left the stars left them millions of years ago and what they are seeing is what was there long ago.
But the whole collective picture, as a whole, was never there. As they see it as a whole. Because the light left different stars at different times. So what they are seeing in one star left 4 million years ago - another star where it was 10 million years ago - and so on for each of the millions of stars they see. Over that time, the stars have moved. In relation to one another.
Mind-boggling. When trying to comprehend the vastness of space & time - and our actual inability to comprehend it - should humble every man who thinks he is something or knows something. In comparison to all that is out there - we know nothing. How arrogant for us to think we know a lot.
Any man who can begin to study the vastness of space & time - or the complexity of the human body & brain - and not believe in God - is a fool. An arrogant fool.
Technically, those stars which are individually discernible to the human eye are unlikely to be even 2000 ly distant.
Deneb is one of the most distant stars you will see with your eye alone. That’s because it’s one of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The exact distance to Deneb is unclear, with estimates ranging from about 1,425 light-years to perhaps as much as 7,000 light-years. Whatever its exact distance, when you gaze at Deneb, know that you are gazing across thousands of light-years of space.