[citation needed] The surveys are most often made of nearby stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
[2] Star count programs can therefore collect data that bounds or determines these values.
One of the hopes of studying the results of star counts is to discover new categories.
The effects of our point of view in the galaxy, the obscuring clouds of gas and dust in the galaxy, and especially the extreme range of inherent brightness, create a biased view of stars.
For example, the blue supergiant ζ Puppis is 400 million times more luminous than the nearest star, a red dwarf named Proxima, or α Centauri C. Even though Proxima is only 4.2 light-years away from us, it is so dim that it cannot be seen with the naked eye (one of its companions, α Centauri A, is visible).