Great post! Very much enjoyed reading.

On your point of seeing the "image" of a distant star millions of years in the past, here is an outlandish thought that came to me (probably high at the time) but nonetheless fun to think about-

Imagine a large planet, or system of some sort, that we see roughly 35 million years in the past. The planet made up of a reflective substance, or the system of reflective particles, that when viewed, shows its reflection (similar to a full moon reflecting the suns rays to us). Now if we could pinpoint something fitting this description and find its reflection of Earth, (35 million years before the reflection, 70 million years in the past) with powerful enough technology, we could actually see and observe dinosaurs in nature!

Of course systems are moving, light is distorted by gravity, obviously talking about zooming in on a speck that we would have infinite odds against finding, but the idea is neat to think about, the fact that if all other things were constant this would be ENTIRELY possible.