What distant cosmic objects can be mistaken for galaxies?

Some faraway things in space can look just like galaxies, even though they're not.

Imagine you're looking at a big crowd of people from far away, it might look like one big group, but up close, you see that some are kids playing and others are adults talking. That’s kind of what happens with cosmic objects in the sky.

Sometimes, stars can be mistaken for galaxies because they're so far away. If you look at a single bright light from a very long way off, it might look like a whole bunch of stars all together, just like a galaxy! But if you get closer, you'd see that it's only one star.

Also, groups of stars, called star clusters, can look like galaxies too. They're not as big as galaxies, but from far away, they might trick your eyes into thinking they’re something bigger and more complicated.

It’s like when you see a bunch of jellybeans in a jar, it looks like one big mass, but if you get closer, you see each tiny jellybean!