This was my second try at this image done in Blender 3D. I'm happier with it, but not entirely satisfied and I still have so much to learn about these types of renders. So a little bit about it. The image was done in two parts. First was setting up the world background, i.e. the starfield. That actually turned out to be the more complicated part, I ended up using a complex node system that allowed me to create some larger blue and red giants, some smaller yellow main sequence stars, and then three groups of progressively dimmer white stars, and then control their number and size. All that ended up packed into a custom node I can re-use in other projects. That part done I created a cube with a volume and plugged a noise texture into a voronoi into a musgrave and that into another noise texture to give me the gas nebula. Four point lights really ramped up added color to the nebula. The last step was first rendering just the starfield as an image, then the nebula on a transparent background and compositing them together adding some glare and other effects. I still don't have the control over the nebula to create the shapes I really want, it lacks realism, and I've far to go. But, as a start it makes a pretty good background for other renders or a desktop wallpaper which is what I use it for. :-)