I ended up picking up the Starbright plugin, because it is exaclty what i was looking for for this specific instance, but I really like your suggestion too bwtr and I can see lots of uses for it.  What I l really like it how you can control individual sizes and flares and such.  Lots of good potential for some great effects with that.

I did something similiar many years back, only instead of space it was underwater and instead of stars it was bubbles (lots of bubble from many things).  That was in Poser, but it did the trick.