True star

In Solar Storms, several trillion red dwarfs are catalogued, along with a comparable number of brown dwarfs. Since none of these are actually visable to the unenhanced human eye from Earth, some in the 23rd century don't consider them to be proper stars. True stars, by this definition, are those capable of sustaining helium fusion.

This is more pertinant when one considers that a red dwarf is incapable of sustaining a stellar gate, but any larger star can.