On van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’

Photo credit: The Rising Nepal Marcia Dunn

Mon, 2 November 2026

Photo credit: The Rising Nepal Marcia Dunn

Mon, 2 November 2026

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-Rémy 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.