Wire reporting: (AP, via France 24)

Primary source: Scientific Reports paper

A paper published Thursday in Scientific Reports argues that the night sky in Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night matches a reconstructed predawn view over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence around July 22, 1889, about a month later than the date art historians have long used^1,2.

The open-access study, by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, Suna Kang, Jungwoo Song and Ho Jin, uses astronomy software, a field of view taken from an earlier sketch of the same terrain, weather records and the artist's letters¹.

The authors say that around that dawn the waning-crescent Moon, Venus and the Hyades cluster in Taurus gathered inside a narrow frame, and that the asterism's geometry lines up with the painting¹.

Art historians have typically dated the canvas to June 1889, soon after van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum². The paper says earlier astronomical readings that assumed a June date reached conflicting conclusions and never tested the arrangement quantitatively¹.

According to the Associated Press account carried by France 24, Kim, a doctoral candidate at Kyung Hee University and chief executive of a Seoul telescope maker, said he is confident July 22 is the better date, while noting nearby days could also have inspired the work².

The same AP account said Jose Luis Aragon of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who has studied the painting as a physicist and did not take part in the new work, treated the July date as a hypothesis rather than a settled answer and said the sky is likely a composite of many nights, which the authors also note^1,2.

The researchers say they first checked the method on other night paintings, including two from 1888 whose sites still exist¹. The AP account said Kim visited Saint-Rémy in 2019 in mid-June and around July 22².

A denylisted UK outlet reported that the Van Gogh Museum still dates the work to June 1889 and that Texas State University astronomer Donald Olson was unconvinced; those objections are not independently confirmed here³. The paper itself presents the July match as a reason to reconsider June, not as a closed case¹.

Sources

1. Scientific ReportsThe actual sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: a multidisciplinary reconstructionOct 21, 8:00 PM
2. (AP, via France 24)Scientists turn art detectives to date van Gogh's 'Starry Night' to actual sky from 1889Also (AP, via WCAX)Oct 22, 1:27 PM
3. The GuardianAstronomers challenge dating of Van Gogh’s Starry NightOct 22, 11:05 AM

Read the original at Scientific Reports ↗