Why can telescopes and long-exposure photography cause confusion between stars and nebulae?

Both appear as bright, glowing objects against the black backdrop of space.

The human tendency to categorize objects based on visual similarities contributes significantly to the confusion between stars and nebulae. Through telescopes and especially long-exposure photography, both stars and nebulae manifest as glowing, often colorful points or structures against the darkness of space. Because humans naturally associate distinct, bright light with stars, they often misinterpret the complex, glowing patterns of a nebula as a single, star-like entity. In reality, the scale difference is immense: a star is a pinpoint of light, whereas a nebula is an expansive, wispy structure that can encompass volumes of space large enough to contain multiple solar systems.