Oh I'm quite familiar with the Star Trek thing....just wasn't sure how you were doing it in Vue.

Here's what I would do......Go to the material that is on the cylinder. Right click in the color tab and click 'load function'.  Under spots you'll see several starfield functions....one is 'Sparse Starfield'.  Load that function. Load the 'black and white' color map...black on the left, white on the right.  Next go to the filter and place a control point in the center and drag it to the lower right. This will get rid of any unwanted stuff between the stars.  Then click and copy that function and place it in the transparency tab with variable transparency on. Invert it if necessary.

Without seeing what you bought I cannot tell how it's animated but I would assume it's 'velocity of material origin'.

Hope this helps a bit.....