Yes, Vue stars are rubbish, IMO. I do something like Silverblade, although that technique has some drawbacks in some circumstances. For example, if you use a planet object, it'll always be behind the star sphere. One solution is to use a sphere mapped as the planet you want, instead of the Vue planetary objects (which are also not very good anyway, so you don't lose much...).

If you use a sphere object, don't forget to set it to "no cast shadows", otherwise it'll block the sunlight from entering. The sphere object must be very big.

I just remembered that eonite posted one of these objects a few months ago, in this forum, as a freebie. Search for posts from him and you'll probably find it, if my mind isn't playing tricks on me. :-)