My guess is the earth is round, but potentially much larger. Stars are ether really close, or are not sun's. There is no possible way stars could remain visible at their supposed distance. There is just too much cosmic debris. Even a spec of dust in the atmosphere would block them. You can see them through the coma of a comet. The Oort cloud would regularly make stars vanish.

We are definitely being lied to about cosmology on a cosmic scale. If you were told stars were millions of miles away, instead of trillions, the possibility of alien contact is suddenly much more likely. Keeping that alone secret would be reason enough for the deception.