Van Gogh’s Starry Night may show a late July sky, not June
A Scientific Reports paper matches the swirling stars to the Hyades on July 22, 1889, challenging the usual June dating, though one astronomer disputes it.
By
Ethan Reid
In brief
- A paper in Scientific Reports reads the painting’s stars as the Hyades cluster in Taurus, not Aries.
- The team’s best fit is the sky of July 22, 1889, rather than mid-June.
- Texas State University astronomer Donald Olson contests the field of view and the match.
The date of one of the world’s best-known paintings may be off by about five weeks. Researchers who studied the stars in The Starry Night say the sky it shows is the one that hung over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on July 22, 1889, not a mid-June night, according to Scientific American.
A familiar date, an old argument and a new constellation
The painting, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is usually placed in mid-June 1889, when van Gogh was in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Art historians lean on a letter to his brother Theo, written on or about June 18, in which he mentions “a new study of a starry sky.” About a month before, he had entered a hospital there. A later illness kept him from painting for roughly six weeks, which is why most historians place the work before that break.
In the 1980s, two astronomers tried to match the painting to mid-June skies. One proposed June 19, 1889 and the constellation Aries. The other rejected that date, citing cloudy weather reports from Aix-en-Provence, about 70 kilometers away.
A paper published on October 22 in Scientific Reports takes a different route. Its authors identify the central stars as the V-shaped Hyades cluster in Taurus.
How the stars were matched to the sky
First author Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, who founded the telescope-building company SLLAB Inc. in Seoul, says he saw the Hyades before he knew of the June date. His team used Procrustes shape analysis, which compares the relative positions of stars and ignores size or color, since those may be artistic embellishments. Five painted stars matched five Hyades stars, and that cluster gave the strongest statistical fit among the alternatives tested, Aries included.
As a check, the researchers ran the same method on Starry Night over the Rhône, which shows the Big Dipper. Its match was comparably strong. The authors ask: “How could an invented sky fit the sky of a particular date this closely?”
Kim also used computer simulations to calculate celestial positions on dates in 1889 to the second, and July 22 fit best. He visited Saint-Rémy in June and July 2019 to find the view from van Gogh’s window, and says this confirmed the Hyades match. On Aries, he argues: “The stars of Aries are relatively faint, hardly enough to inspire a painter.”
Two datings side by side
| Evidence | Mid-June dating | Late-July dating |
|---|---|---|
| Moon | Would have been a waning gibbous, according to the researchers | A waning crescent, as in the painting |
| Letter of about June 18 | Read as proof the study was done | Authors say it does not mean the painting was finished; it may have been painted in several sessions |
| Constellation | Aries | Hyades in Taurus |
| Aries in the letters | Never mentioned, despite regular references to Venus, which was close to that constellation |
What the skeptic says
Donald Olson, a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Texas State University, is unconvinced. He argues that the authors’ narrow assumed field of view, essential to their idea that the Hyades fill most of the canvas, clashes with the much wider view needed to include the painting’s round hills and cliffs. He adds: “The calculated position of brilliant Venus, in relation to the V shape of the Hyades asterism, does not match the painting.”
Olson also proposes a test. Tell an amateur astronomer the painting shows the Hyades and ask them to find Aldebaran, the brightest star of the cluster. Kim’s team identifies it as one of two stars left of the cypress. “If [the authors’ theory] is correct, then this should be easy,” Olson says, though he expects an experienced observer will not pick those two stars.
Kim, for his part, says the burden of proof has now shifted to showing the painting could not have been made in late July. NASA Hubble fellow James Beattie notes that van Gogh’s view from the asylum window was quite restricted, and says: “If the identification holds, we can look up today and recognize the same stars van Gogh saw.”
Photo: Israel Torres / Pexels
