There's nothing misleading about removing light sources to reveal other light sources. You're speaking as though they erased all the sky's stars. The image is full of stars. This is petty.
> Much of the time was spent painstakingly erasing stars, to reveal the satellites.
These aren’t my words. It’s what the article says!
The final image appears to have a frame of stars added for effect, but they are dots rather than arcs because they’re from a single exposure. The satellite trails are a composite of all of the images, with the stars removed.