M33 visual

[Mike in Rancho]

There are some good debates and discussions out there for "star or not star" when it comes to things like the LMC, M31, M33. But often it can turn into arguments about how to define terms, like resolving.

Understandable. Being technical, maybe no star can be truly resolved beyond the point source, except maybe Betelgeuse in a professional telescope? And there are plenty of multiple star systems where even pro equipment can't physically split the stars, so they are called things like spectroscopic doubles if it can be confirmed that way.

To me and with amateur equipment, resolving a known star would be more commonly understood as seeing or detection. And it could be cross checked with databases and other resources to find out what is there.

But depending on target region, again probably LMC, M31 or M33, we could extrapolate our pixel scale out to that distance and calculate just what one pixel means. And it might be many light years across! Then it's a matter of trying to think what could be within that pixel, or pixels due to diffraction. In some cases it could very well be an exceptionally bright star that would so dominate anything else in the neighborhood (or behind it, lost in dust or the diffuse overall glow of a galactic disk, for example) that you could confirm via spectra, or reasonably presume, that the captured photons there are effectively from a single star.