Seeing the stars "3000" miles away

If you can see stars without the help of telescopes (naked eye), why would we not be able to view the "ice wall" with the help of telescopes.

As far as I can tell, the ice wall hasn't had really bright lights emanating from it since that one time the guards figured out it was probably a bad idea to get too festive during the holidays.

~D-Draw

1. Stars are much, much brighter than ice.
2. Most of the habitable parts of the Earth are more than 3000 miles from the ice wall.
3. The light from stars only has to travel through a few dozen miles of atmosphere to reach us, the light from the ice wall would have to travel through thousands of miles of atmosphere.