With the exception of supernovae , individual stars have primarily been observed in the Local Group , and especially in the visible part of the Milky Way ( as demonstrated by the detailed star catalogues available for our galaxy ) . But some stars have been observed in the M100 galaxy of the Virgo Cluster , about 100 million light years from the Earth . In the Local Supercluster it is possible to see star clusters , and current telescopes could in principle observe faint individual stars in the Local Group ( see Cepheids ) . However , outside the Local Supercluster of galaxies , neither individual stars nor clusters of stars have been observed . The only exception is a faint image of a large star cluster containing hundreds of thousands of stars located at a distance of one billion light years — ten times further than the most distant star cluster previously observed .