Original image:

POV-Ray scene:

background { rgb .5 }
camera { location -z look_at 0 angle 90 }
box
{ <0, 0, -.001>, <1, 1, .1>
  pigment { image_map { jpeg "Starfield_original.jpg" } }
  finish { diffuse 0 ambient 1 }
  translate <-.5, -.5>
}
box
{ <-2, -2, 0>, <2, 0, .2>
  pigment { checker rgb 0, rgb 1 scale <10, 1/256, 10> translate -x*5 }
  finish { diffuse 0 ambient 1 }
}

The background color of this page is "#7F7F7F". The background color of the scene above is "rgb 0.5".

Rendered with POV-Ray 3.6.1 (at 512x384):

Rendered with POV-Ray 3.7 beta 33 (with default settings):

The first strip below was rendered with POV-Ray 3.6, the second one with POV-Ray 3.7 beta 33. There are 16 boxes with linear rgb color settings.