The scale of things when dealing with astronomical objects really highlights these conceptual things, but this is true in everything we experience.
The baseball crossing over the homerun fence was hit seconds before it got there.
The arrow that pierced the target was launched well before it got there.
We just don’t consider those events as happening until we witness the objects pass whatever threshold we consider significant.
With light, though, we’re used to the time between the initiating event and the threshold being reached being functionally nil, so we don’t distinguish the difference.
The scale of things when dealing with astronomical objects really highlights these conceptual things, but this is true in everything we experience.
The baseball crossing over the homerun fence was hit seconds before it got there.
The arrow that pierced the target was launched well before it got there.
We just don’t consider those events as happening until we witness the objects pass whatever threshold we consider significant.
With light, though, we’re used to the time between the initiating event and the threshold being reached being functionally nil, so we don’t distinguish the difference.