They are not covering up the stars. There is a range of light intensities that can be captured by a camera. It is called “exposure latitude”. If you adjust the exposure to render brightly illuminated objects an still show detail, objects with low intensity will not be visible. Conversely, if you adjust exposure to render faintly illuminated objects, bright objects will be shown as all white with no detail.
Read your post again—you just explained how someone could hide the background stars if there was something they did not want folks to see.
As one photographer to another, this is the most likely and physically provable (falsifiable) explanation. As the poster says he is a space junkie, you’d think the most basics of physics would be something he would also be interested in.