How many stars would it take to draw a line across the middle of the sky that appeared solid? I was talking with a friend about how slowly the star field changes (based on the speed that we are moving through the galaxy) and I started to wonder about a star's visible size.  They are basically the pixels that make up our sky.  This made me wonder, how many stars (let's use the north star as a reference.) would it take (lined up side by side) to draw line that appeared solid across the middle of the sky, perpendicular to the horizon which appeared solid?
This is more of a question of human perception, than astronomy. I was going to answer your question with this: "One, it just needs to be close to Earth." But, I decided it wasn't THAT funny. Anyway, stars are essentially point sources as far as our eyes are concerned. Typical visual resolution is about 0.02° or 0.0003 radians. Assuming from horizon to horizon is 180° (or π radians) that calculates out to roughly 10,000 stars. I'd probably increase that by 50% or 100% to be sure. You do understand that you can't line stars up side by side, I hope. There's no need, its about the angular distance, not absolute distance between them, that matters. They can be light years apart as long as they appear to be within about 1 arcminute of one another, our eyes will see them as a single object - subject to the psychological aspects of keeping color and apparent magnitude roughly uniform as well.