New study traces van Gogh's famed 'Starry Night' to an actual night sky
from 1889
[October 23, 2026]
By MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists doubling as art detectives have
traced Vincent van Gogh’s “ The Starry Night ” to a celestial scene that
suggests a new date for one of the world’s most famous paintings.
Their findings indicate that rather than being a product of van Gogh’s
imagination, “The Starry Night” may have been inspired by what he saw as
he gazed heavenward from his French asylum 137 years ago.
A South Korean team reported Thursday that after years of forensic
astronomy and research into the Dutch artist, they have matched his
masterpiece to a predawn sky over France’s Saint-Remy de Provence right
around July 22, 1889.
That’s a month later than the long-accepted time frame for the
postimpressionist painting depicting a crescent moon and Venus
surrounded by a sky of swirling stars with a village nestled below and
cypress trees looming on one side.
Art historians have long dated the painting to June 1889, soon after Van
Gogh checked into the asylum. He’d cut off his left ear several months
earlier during an argument with painter Paul Gauguin.
A team led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, the CEO of a Seoul telescope maker,
is now disputing that date in a study appearing in the journal
Scientific Reports.
The sky that is most similar to the painting occurred around July 22,
1889, said Kim, who is also a doctoral candidate at Kyung Hee
University. He noted that the few days before and after could have
inspired van Gogh as well.
“No two skies are the same. Something always changes. I believe Vincent
noticed those changes and put them into the painting,” Kim said in an
email.
He added: “I am confident that July 22 is the better date. I will bet on
this date.”
The latest study addresses “a real puzzle” that in mid-June 1889, the
moon was not the thin crescent painted by van Gogh, said Jose Luis
Aragon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has studied
“The Starry Night” as a physicist, but did not take part in the new
research.
“Still, I would see the July date as an intriguing hypothesis rather
than a settled answer,” Aragon said in an email.
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Visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston view Vincent van Gogh's
painting, "The Starry Night," on Oct. 17, 2003, in Houston. (AP
Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
 Long fascinated by van Gogh’s art,
Kim traveled to France in 2019, the first time in mid-June and the
second around July 22. He found brilliant stars rising in July’s
predawn sky, unlike June.
Kim and his team discovered through further celestial sleuthing that
around July 22, 1889, the shape of the moon before dawn appeared
like the one in the painting, with the Hyades star cluster in the
constellation Taurus rising in the east alongside Venus. The sky
should have been clear enough for van Gogh to see all this, based on
their weather analyses.
Van Gogh is thought to have suffered a seizure around that time in
July. But Kim and his team contend that the seizure occurred later
in July, based on their analyses of letters between the painter and
one of his brothers. Some of those letters refer to cicadas, another
clue that points toward the hotter July, according to Kim.
The researchers tested and verified their methods on night skies in
other paintings, making for what Aragon considers “a careful and
genuinely interdisciplinary study.”
Since van Gogh painted in a studio at the asylum from sketches and
memory, “the sky is likely a composite of many nights as the authors
themselves acknowledge," Aragon said.
“What I find most convincing is the broader message: The painting is
not pure fantasy. Van Gogh watched the real sky very closely,"
Aragon said.
Despite all his research, Kim has never seen “The Starry Night” at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“Now that the paper is out, I really have to go and see ‘The Starry
Night’ in person, don’t I?” he said.
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