Think of it this way: the best picture we have of andromeda (the galaxy closest to us) has 1.5 billion pixels. Compare that to the fact that the andromeda galax

Think of it this way: the best picture we have of andromeda (the galaxy closest to us) has 1.5 billion pixels. Compare that to the fact that the andromeda galaxy contains on the order of one trillion stars. So we can't really see individual stars, except in the sense that some may be bright enough that they dominate the signal in their pixel.