Nobody panic

[Glom]

I have live coverage of the emergency spacewalk on the ISS to repair the coolant leak playing.  One of the fixed cameras they show appears to show stars in the background, lots of stars.  Now, I know they can't be stars, not least of which because we can see in the foreground, the solar panel tracking the Sun, revealing the constant changing attitude, yet these "stars" remain absolutely fixed in the view.

So what are these "stars"?

[LunarOrbit]

I'm watching it too and was wondering the same thing. It shows the astronauts in the center but kind of ghostly, with "stars" all around them. My guess is that the CCD in the camera is damaged from years of exposure to bright light and only the center of the CCD is still capable of recording an image.

[RAF]

Noticed that...now if you look very closely at the "non"-space portions of the video...such as the station, itself, and you will see these same "dots"...just not as noticeable as are the dots against the blackness of space.

Verdict...video artifact.

I also watched them for a long time, and they don't change position as they would if they were stars.

[RAF]

...yet these "stars" remain absolutely fixed in the view.

Oops...didn't notice this on first read through...apologies for "duplicating" an answer...

[Glom]

Their lack of motion is a dead giveaway that they're not stars.  This particular view is the best one of them all.  So sharp.  It makes the artefacts look more real.  It's put progress in perspective when we're spend of our time talking about Apollo television footage.

Also, it's fun to see how an octopus of tools moves in weightlessness.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

It's all faked, in swimming pools on earth. 

[Zakalwe]

Probably "hot" pixels on the sensor chip. Sensors get them all the time, along with dead "cold" pixels. Hot pixels are "stuck" and always show, cold pixels do not register anything.