With the quotient realization defined in part (i), the answers are no and no. Write as countably many closed arms with all their zero endpoints identified to .
First, the outer vertices form a closed discrete subset. Its intersection with every closed arm is the closed singleton at coordinate one, so is closed by the weak topology. The terminal half-arm is an open neighbourhood of meeting only there. Thus is infinite, closed and discrete. Since closed discrete subsets of compact spaces are finite, is not compact. A homeomorphism to a compact subset of the plane would make compact, which is impossible.
For the stronger obstruction, suppose were a countable neighbourhood basis at . Each contains an initial interval in arm , so choose on that arm with coordinate . Define to meet arm in . It is an open neighbourhood of , because each of these intersections is open in the closed interval . But for every , so no is contained in . This contradicts the basis condition.
Hence is not first countable. Every metric space is first-countable, with local basis of balls of radius , and this property passes to subsets with the subspace topology. Thus is not homeomorphic to any subset of . This is the weak realization of a countable star.
The realization convention matters. For the metric realization of a simplicial complex using Euclidean distance on barycentric coordinates, the second answer would be yes: map the point on arm at parameter to . Each ray is isolated away from zero, and at zero both spaces have neighbourhood bases given by a single radius on all arms. This gives the metric realization of a countable star as a planar subset, still noncompact. It does not give the quotient topology used in part (i).
