Hmm, I doubt we wouldn't be able to see through even the densest nebula; (perhaps the center of the galaxy is an obstacle).
If we were to see our solar system from say Epsilon Eridani, what would it look like using infrared frequencies? The Earth is located inside what we know as the zodiacal light-fine grains of dust that spread all over the inner solar system, from far away, it would look like Saturn's rings, but from here, of course, it looks like vacuum.
In science fiction, even when the spacecraft is biljuns and biljuns of miles away from an uncharacteristical star, there is always a sunlit side and a shadow side on that spacecraft...I always ask myself: but where is that Sun that lights up the spacecraft?
Very very hard to fathom what space is all about, even after having been there for all those years.

And well, why do we need to look for a purpose? Why is it so difficult to imagine the universe and ourselves WITHOUT a purpose?
I'm not sure we would feel any worse by not finding a purpose. After all, like everything in it, and the universe itself, it has started once and it will also end...sometime in the future.
Perhaps humans and life's greatest purpose is to procreate and hope the successor will find that purpose.

Raoul