That is a nice photo of M51! I wonder how many stars are in your photo.
I dunno. Looking at the galaxy arms which appear to be wispy or smoke like, are all made up of stars and dust. So many stars it’s impossible to count them in my image. The experts estimate this galactic system is composed of about 100 million stars. I’m told the arms are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars.