Is that Celestia?
I suppose so. Or better I am sure. (And welcome to the forum)
What I have done (it was long before the common use of computer):
I looked through an astronomy book with all the data of stars and their position.
Then caculated the position to (x,y,z) coordinates.
After that I realised that the displayed stars are very far apart (the book only stated the bigger stars
or some on interest or ...
I don't know).
So I choose one star and built the space around it.
How?
I used the star density of our galaxy arm (rounded it up because the space was nearer to the core).
So I knew in every cube of x*y*z LY (LightYear) there is one star, so I randomly roll for position.
At this point I followed the normal SM procedure (So there could happened to be more stars).
I noted down the position of the star on a paper-sheet with a fine line-grid (millimeter-paper).
Today I would also go the way with computer assistence.
(I would like to be competent enough to program a good GUI :'( )
It seems that
Celestia got all you need.
See the use of Celestia for Shadow World <- Link