Is it possible to leave an object unrendered? This does sound strange but let me explain.

What I'm trying to do is an animation in blender that involves planets rotating and when I render the footage it looks okay except for one object, which looks better unrendered.

This object is a sphere with the hair particle effect but instead of hair strands, I've swapped them for uv spheres to make stars(I was following a tutorial) and when I rendered it, it didn't come out with the same realistic stars, just some very bland basic dots.

So this "space" sphere that acts as my background is what I want to leave unrendered while the rest is rendered.

This is the tutorial I followed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSeBoIDJV4&amp;t=312s&amp;list=PLrK_z0ZJOEyGDSGgNlr0Bk37rCXFchk4I&amp;index=81

The issue I encountered with this tutorial is when he starts using nodes which doesn't work on my version of blender and I don't know what version the instructor is using P:

Also due to copyright I can't upload any part of this model.

Update:
I just upgraded to version 2.79 and I cannot find the render cycle option in the menu, is this what you meant?
You probably forgot to switch from Blender render to Cycles. 

To switch from Blender render to Cycles, simply click on the drop-down menu near the top of the screen. It's right next to the little blender logo icon. Select "Cycles" Render from the list and you should be good.

Unless you have a version older than 2.42 (which was released in July of 2006), you have nodes. It's just a matter of opening the node view and selecting the correct material.

To open the node view, divide the 3d view area into two and then switch the second view's editor type to Node Editor.