Actually, after taking a second, third and fourth look at these, and as a backyard astrophotographer for 18 years, I'm going to say these actually are all individually resolved stars and clusters in M51. Clearly in this
https://cdn.esawebb.org/archives/images/large/potm2308b.jpg
You can tell they are M51 stars, but that there are just a handful of bright, HUGE foreground Milky Way stars in the shot.
Especially considering the Ursa Major location of M51 well outside of our own Milky Way plane, there isn't a ton of foreground stars lying on the galaxies compared to other galaxies seen through the plane of our own.
When I photograph M31 Andromeda, which is hugely closer, with my 8 inch refractor, you can just start to see the resolution of these extra-galactic large clusters, as in:
https://pbase.com/mclemens1969/image/128625703/original
So this seems right that this huge aperture scope would resolve in M51. Just wait until they shoot the large clusters in M33 and M31 !!
You can tell they are M51 stars, but that there are just a handful of bright, HUGE foreground Milky Way stars in the shot.
Especially considering the Ursa Major location of M51 well outside of our own Milky Way plane, there isn't a ton of foreground stars lying on the galaxies compared to other galaxies seen through the plane of our own.
When I photograph M31 Andromeda, which is hugely closer, with my 8 inch refractor, you can just start to see the resolution of these extra-galactic large clusters, as in: https://pbase.com/mclemens1969/image/128625703/original
So this seems right that this huge aperture scope would resolve in M51. Just wait until they shoot the large clusters in M33 and M31 !!
Here is my own M51 https://pbase.com/mclemens1969/image/154398728/original