Van Gogh’s The Starry Night sky matches that of a date in July 1889, suggests study
Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night sky matches that of a date in July 1889, according to new research. The iconic painting has conventionally been dated from a letter the artist wrote to his brother, Theo, around June 18 that year. But experts say the waning gibbous moon of that period can’t account for the slender crescent in the painting. A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, finds that the sky in the painting matches, in both observation and shape, the pre-dawn sky over Van Gogh’s then home in Saint-Rémy, France, around July 22, 1889. It featured a waning crescent moon, Venus and the Hyades star cluster – all within the painter’s field of view, according to the first astronomical re-examination of the painting in four decades. The study was conducted jointly by space-science company SLLAB and the School of Space Research at Kyung Hee University in South Korea.…
