i was thinking while bored if we only see light when it bounces off an object could we invent something that allows us to see it (light)in midair with out an object like if you were to see smoke floating through the wind? then i was thinking if we did we could use it in space like your own head lights in goggles as space is black cuz there ent nothing for it to reflect but light from the still travels we could use it who knows what we might see???????

No.
Using your smoke analogy, would you be able to see it if each of the smokes particles needs to head straight to your eyeballs?
Yes; you would see it coming (only because it's a poor analogy), but it would no longer be floating through the wind.

Same with light. If it doesn't hit your eyes, there's no way to see it without deflecting it.
If there's nothing for it to reflect, then what is there to see?

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I´m not sure whether I understand what you´re asking. I assume that you would like to know if we can see only light which is reflected from an object. If this is your point, the answer is NO. We can also see light which is emitted from an object (e.g., a star).
Of course, all the light (photons) we see, whether reflected or not, has (have) to enter our eyes.

Is that of any help?

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1 + e^i*pi = 0

lets just say with out an object you could see light in the mid air bloody hell people stop trying to be clever like a nerd and just use your imagination dont forget all inventions start with an idea no imagination with some of you just calculations

no i know light comes from stars and all that what i am trying to say is that if we invented something that would allow us see light in mid air "with out" "with out" an object,like dust in the air but it would not be dust it would be light mabe we could used that in space.

You asked "could we". That very question restricts the imagination to known concepts.
Sure, that's where they start, but they are developed with known properties of materials and thier science. They go hand in hand.

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???? ????
Where do you live?

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If everyone had even a basic grasp of scientific principles, this planet would be a better place (Phil Plait)

Die Lücke, die wir hinterlassen, ersetzt uns vollkommen [The gap we will leave behind will take our place entirely] (Carl Heinz Schroth)

1 + e^i*pi = 0

Actually, this post made me think of what I *think* he or she is asking in a different way.

How many photons would be in any given volume of space?

As a thought experiment, say you could send out "impossitons" that can reflect off photons and back to your detector (this is a thought experiment, so let's ignore the fact that you can't detect photons without affecting them), letting you "image" the location of every photon in your detector's field of view. How many photons would you "see" in that snapshot? I realize there would be different numbers in a given volume depending on where you were.

Other than that, I can't think of any meaningful way to answer the OP. The thread title suggests looking at a light beam, like a search-light, but most objects in space send photons out in all directions. With my impossible detector, you wouldn't see columns of light crossing space from each star or anything, because that's not how the light is emitted, typcially.

CJSF

P.S.
I have a hunch the answer to any of this is frightfully more complicated than one might think.

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Moonshine?

We can see light from a beam in space if there is enough dust or gas particles in the volume and the light is of the proper frequency.

If there were a way to detect the passage of a photon without engaging it, then perhaps we could sense it. However, due to the very large amount of photons passing through a unit volume of space, it would probably look like a very bright fog, unless you can sort through frequencies. Perhaps if light waves/photons interacted with the space-time continuum in a way that could be detected, then such a desire could be fulfilled. Perhaps some sort of multi-verse discriminator could detect light due to the possibility that for each unit of space, it may have, in another universe, encountered a particle from which to reflect.

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