How do people draw nice space backgrounds which have alot of stars and a purplish-bluish gas? Or does NASA offer such pictures?

the easiest way to create such stuff is to use bryce (try corel ??site for more info),also you got some space tuts for lightwave.. (better space web site..try google search or go to lw official site and find tuts )....

Google for a program called Universe - download it and problem solved...