If you're at a distance far enough from the star that you're near the Goldilocks Zone like Earth (far enough away that it isn't burning you up, close enough that you're not frozen) then it's far enough to be a directional light just to save computing power. If you want to spend the few extra cycles make it a point light, but visually the will likely be identical.
For reference, Earth is about 150 million kilometers on the near side of the habitable zone, Mars is about 230 million kilometers on the far side of the habitable zone. Presumably you'd be a somewhat similar distance in your space game. Since meter scale is common, having a light source 200,000,000,000 units away will have no significant difference if it's a point light or a directional light.
The sun, stars, and other objects at an irrelevantly-large distance are usually just drawn as a skybox. That's a texture you draw to the background that completely covers the world's view and usually serves double-duty. Not only is it the “really far away” background, but by setting the depth buffer function to the “always” constant, drawing a skybox overwrites both the depth buffer and the background, eliminating a call to clear().