In astronomy, a starfield was any set of stars visible inside an arbitrarily-sized field of view.
In 2365, Captain Donald Varley had obtained an Iconian artifact from an archaeological dig on Denius III. Described as a galactic Rosetta Stone, starfields on the artifact helped pinpoint the planet Iconia after 200 millennia of stellar drift were taken into account. (TNG: "Contagion")