>>4181385>I have a lens hood on order which I assume will help.Think about how light enters your lens and how a lens hood might interfere with that if you trace the way a light ray might take into your lens.
The lens hood is for blocking light that's coming from a light source off-axis to your lens, like directly from the sun above or w/e, which, without a hood, might enter the front element(s) of your lens and cause flaring their which reduces contrast. The hood is there to cast a bit of shadow onto your front lens elements and prevent the flaring.
The sun stars in your images, however, are literally on the subject, it's the sun's (or other) light reflecting off of your subject and right into your lens, through it, and onto your sensor. It enters your lens in the lens' axis, so the lens hood will never interfere with it and it won't help you with this.
Like the others have said, to get rid of the star-shape and make it more into a circular highlight, you need to open up your lens aperture. To make the highlights less bright you need to either lower exposure (everything, including the specular highlights will get darker) or cast a shadow onto the subject in order to block the way the sunlight takes (directly fromt he sun to the subject, reflecting off of it, and into your lens and from there onto the sensor, where you can see the bright spot).
