Ok, a few comments.

1.)  Thanks for cranking out some examples.  I appreciate it.
2.)  You've generated a few of these quick examples in the forum in the last few weeks.  I'm just going to have to try it and see how hard/easy it really is.  I think it's sort of a matter of practice and also having a few premade textures on hand.

I've been doing some thinking about how to get planets up in the sky in an easy manner.  I've got some good ideas which I'll try.  If it turns out to be straight forward, I'll make it a tutorial.

I'm thinking that you could render an image of a planet with just one light in a completely black scene.

Then, take a single plane, do not allow it to accept light, and put the rendered planet in the glow channel with a mixer to control brightness.

I'll try that and see if it works.  Depending on how it plays out, I think you can set it up so that it won't show stars through either (we'll see).  That would take a little bit of work in the transparency channel.  I just don't know until I try it.

If it works though, You could essentially make a set of splats that you could put in the sky, have them point at the camera, release the behavior and then rotate them to point at the light source.

Ya, lots of steps so a tutorial is warrented (if it works).

Depending on my energy level, I could even build a little kit and put it up in the free stuff.

-Kix