Marco Langbroek, a space expert who has been tracking North Korea’s provocative military programme, examined the latest photos from the hermit kingdom showing off the Hwasong-15 missile and declared they were not original.
He said: “After the launch, North Korea’s KCNA press/propaganda agency published several pictures, showing Kim Jong-un directing the readying of the transporter erector launcher (TEL) with missile, and the launch.
“Several of these images, both from the missile erection sequence before launch and the launch itself, show stars.
“These two images appear to be real (although, given what I will point out below, all images remain suspect, because they clearly aren’t all real. With “real”, I mean “untampered with” here).
“I used them to determine azimuth directions and the Local Sidereal Time (and from that UTC time) these images apparently were taken, by creating an astrometric grid over the image.
“The fact that some of these show stars in itself is already something, as these images necessitate short exposures (unlike the pre-launch images, which are long duration exposures), so you do not expect stars.
“But the real fun came when I looked at these visible stars. There, things clearly were not right!
“The shape of the exhaust cloud and exhaust flame (and the number decal, extremities and paint job on the missile) clearly indicate they were taken from the same viewpoint, probably within a fraction of a second of each other.
“But take a look at the stars in the background: these then should show the same sky area, right? But they do not!”
Mr Langbroek also detailed in his blog post that North Korea most likely only made alterations to the images for “aesthetics” purposes and not to make their weaponry seem more intimidating.
He added: “The most likely reason is simply that they did it for aesthetics. An ICBM soaring into the stars makes for good propaganda images. They apparently just didn’t care enough to do it correctly.
“Aesthetics seem to be important in North Korean propaganda pictures.
“Or maybe they wanted to play a prank on analysts as well: they know these images will be analysed by the west.
“Fooling around with clues as to the orientation of images makes it harder to glean information from them on 3-dimensional missile shape, and launch site geolocation.”
After discovering faults in the images taken by the rogue state, Mr Langbroek tweeted his findings.
He declared: “So, I just discovered that the North Koreans DID tamper with their Hwasong 15 launch pictures! Two images from clearly same viewpoint, but dramatically different star backgrounds! Orion (Southeast) versus Andromeda (Northwest)!
“More evidence of tampered Hwasong 15 imagery: two images, mirrors of each other (look at exhaust plume, lack of number on missile body 2nd image) so opposite viewpoints. Yet Starfield in background both south-southeast, Orion and Canis major (but with Sirius missing!).”
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, added that the pictures “look so crisp, that just didn’t seem right to me”.
He went on: “Stars just don’t look that different a few miles apart, and we have no reason to disbelieve that this launch was from the Pyongsong region north of Pyongyang.”
Last week Kim Jong-un fired his most powerful missile yet and claimed the newly developed Hwasong-15 reached an altitude of 2,800 miles and stated that country now had the power to target the “whole” of the US.