Boolean operation - cutting away parts around the edge of a circle (picture included).

Hi,

I'm trying to make a logo which consists of only two stars and a circle. I have been trying to use the Pathfinder tool in Illustrator CS3 but have not succeeded.

In the picture below you can see that I have the blue circle selected and you an see the light blue edge around it when selected. This is the outer edge that i would like to keep. Everything outside of this light blue edge I wish to disappear.

This means that I want the two stars (1 x white and 1 x blue) to be _cut_ around this edge. The result would be the blue circle/sphere and about half of both the white and blue stars within - but the stars would be nicley cut around the rounded edge of the circle.
Everything outside the circle's edge should be gone.

I want one vector object consisting of the circle and half of the stars within.

Does anyone know how to do this? Do I need CS5 for this?

You, Sir, are a frikkin' GOD.
Thank you soooo much for helping me with this. And may I add - thank you for explaining it in such detail. The part where you go out of your way and say "After everything is broken into pieces, you can select the unwanted portions with the Group select tool and delete them" - This part made me actually _understand_ the Pathfinder Divide option. I played with that function before but didn't really _get_ what the result was. Now that you informed me that the Group Select Tool also exists, well that just made an enormous difference when I all of a sudden was able to select individual broken out shards/shapes and just delete them.

I was laughing out loud in joy then the program did _exactly_ what I had envisioned but failed to accomplish on my own. You just made me very, very happy and I can not thank you enough.

This program has such power but I am such a dweeb at using it.

Vince, you ROCK. :)