Study links The Starry Night to a July sky

A new astronomical study identifies the central stars in Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night as the Hyades cluster in Taurus and says the painting’s sky most closely matches dawn around July 22, 1889. Published October 22 in Scientific Reports, the research challenges the painting’s traditional association with mid-June but does not establish when van Gogh completed the canvas. The researchers compared the relative positions of five stars in the painting with star patterns using a geometric method called Procrustes analysis. Among the constellations they tested, the Hyades produced the strongest fit, the team reported. They also applied their method to van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhône, which depicts the Big Dipper, as a test of the approach. The study’s reconstruction places the Moon, Venus and the Hyades within the view represented in The Starry Night around July 22. The authors also considered historical weather records and van Gogh’s letters. They argue that a June 18, 1889, letter mentioning a new study of a starry sky does not prove the painting was finished by then, and suggest he may have begun it in June and continued later. The proposed date remains a...