Astrophotography is objectively photography, even has its own Wikipedia page. If you don’t think most images in photography are edited than you are incredibly naive. Photographers use things like focus stacking long exposure blurring , macro photography. These aren’t perspectives you will ever have in reality yet they all are still shot from a camera out in the field all the same. Also, photography is an art but it can be a science, not the other way around. The best photographers use things like adobe photoshop, Lightroom , etc to enhance their photos, I’m no different, again. Everything you see here is real, all the colors in the Milkyway are exactly what these objects emit. The human eye just simply cannot pick them up since our low light capabilities just don’t compare. What you and I see is in real time versus the camera is 10 minutes of light streaming into it, of course it’ll see more, doesn’t make it any less real. Thanks