Does anyone know of a way to really lower the brightness of stars at night? 

 

I'm using Autostar X and there is a way in the Tools option to lower brightness but in FSX that does not really show, especially if you zoom out in any of the views, the stars become brighter and brighter. I'm guessing that this has something to do with mipmapping each pixel? However I'm not sure. How are the individual pixels of the stars in FSX generated? I came across the fx_Dots.bmp and fx_WhiteDot in the FSX Effects folder and thought that these files may be related to the star pixels.

 

I just want to be able to edit the stars to make them appear fainter in the night sky, without however reducing the actual number of stars.

Keep lowering the brightness in AutoStarX until things are the way you like it.