Cupertino has tightened its grip and wiped out entire star systems with the release of OS X Lion, according to a report by Boing Boing.

Lion's default desktop image is a well-treated version of this Astronmy Pic of the Day. However, in creating the image, Apple obliterated several stars as well as an entire galaxy.

See for yourself. Here is the original image of the Andromeda Galaxy produced by astrophotographer Robert Gendler:

And here is the new default Lion desktop (with labels added to show what was omitted):

David Kaplan, assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, sent the images to Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing. He added in an email, "Apple has once again altered the Universe according to their whim. They moved/removed many stars, and got rid of a whole galaxy."

M110, we hardly knew ya!

Kaplan said without rechecking the actual sky, "he can't guarantee that galaxy M110 hasn't actually vanished from the sky. But he's pretty sure it's only really been lost to Photoshop."

Or perhaps we are made to think so. But these cleaned up images, they may be too accurate to be just a Photoshop job...

Adrian covers daily news and the weekly "Law & Apple" column for Mac|Life.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.