There was a LOT of criticism from actual astrophotographers on this image as it is mostly photoshop art. If it had been presented as such specifically stating that its a composite it would have been better. APOD has had more than its share of this sort of thing as the people that do the selection are not imagers themselves, it reflects kind of poorly on NASA to have their name associated with it! This sort of thing happens all the time now with regular terrestrial photos as well, you can edit in fake sky backgrounds and all kind of AI stuff, its then passed off as the real thing and they get annoyed when its pointed out to them!!

Mike