I understand why we can’t see stars during the day: the sun illuminates the atmosphere and effectively blots them out. But why can’t we see low earth orbit satellites, which are not exactly “outside” the atmosphere? If they’re inside, shouldn’t we see them reflecting sunlight back to us?
It comes down to the sun being really bright, enough so to overpower the light reflected from the satellites. Consider for example how you can see the effect of car headlights for kilometres away at night time but during daytime you’d be hard pressed to pick them out at all at such distances. Your eyes at night time also adjust to the low light and can see fainter light sources than you can with eyes adjusted to daytime levels.