Max Evening Sky
 I thankfully learned each part of this from different 3D tutorials on the web, i hope this is a good payback to somebody new wanting a simple max background of the night sky. I did this in max r3 but i'm sure it will work for those with higher versions of max than me :(
This effect will take place inside of your material library, open that up first and choose a new swatch to edit. With the new swatch click the blue circle in the Material Window (Get Material). A dialog pops up, you can choose a method for making your new material. Select the New Material option and choose a Stucco pattern. Inside the Stucco attributes change the thickness value to .5. Next change the Size value to .192.
This is your new sky material with stars only, we need to apply it to our environment. Do this by opening the "Rendering -> Environment..." dialog.
Under the Environment parameter click the Map button. All you have to do is find the Map number you just made. Under Browse From: Choose Mtl Editor. The Map with the highest number is probably the one you just made. Choose your map number to apply the mat to your environment. Max will prompt you to make it an instance or a copy. I choose instance so i can change the material swatch and it changes the environment.
Before we go on render your scene to see the stars. Note! Environment effects only work in certain viewports! Meaning don't view from the top, left or right and hit render expecting to see stars. Choose your camera's viewport to be sure.
Adjust the settings to your liking. Next is adding the crucial gradient to any sky.
To add the gradiant background effect, select your instance source swatch from the material library (the one you just made). In the Stucco parameters hit the MAP button associated with the black color square. In the Dialog under "Browse From" change to "New" and choose "Gradiant".
In the gradiant parameters, change the top two colors to solid black, change the bottom color to a deep dark blue or violet you've seen the sky. Again that's Color's 1 and 2 make 100% black Color 3 is your preference. Finally change Color 2's position to .618.
Hit render. You now have a gradient space with stars on top. All that's needed is some land. Maybe a few planets in the sky etc.
Oh also, if you want your stars to vary in color which you probably do then keep reading. Just like you applied the gradiant map to the black stucco color swatch, you can apply a different map for the white (gray). Go back to the top of your material window for the Stucco swatch. Click the Map button for the white swatch. Choose a Planet map. This gives you eight colors you play with. Make more than one the same color if needed.
I change my three water colors to light gray and change the Ocean parameter to 95%. This will yield 95% of the stars in the sky white. Also decrease your continent size to a lower number like maybe 10. The remaining 5 colors are your stars. Try yellow, red, blue, green etc. Also change the materials tiling to 10 or greater. You should have some varied colored stars in there too.
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