The sky in “The Starry Night” seems to respond to a particular night. For example, on July 22, 1889 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Southern France). A South Korean team analyzed the sky it represents and compared it to the summer original. This is the best option available to them. It can be said that the sky was visible then, but that does not mean that the day he painted.
In research published in Scientific Reports (Oct. 22, 2026), they propose a revision of the usual chronology. The first of the authors is Eliza Jeong-Hyun Kim; In addition to being a doctoral student at Kyung Hee University, he runs a company dedicated to telescopes. How many observations are there in this sky?
One key is the moon. Researchers take into account that it is decreasing in the picture. Also Venus is in a fixed position and the Hyades (a group of stars in Taurus) are together. All this coincides with sunrise around July 22. Additionally, they have meteorological data accompanying Van Gogh’s letter and suggest that the sky corresponds to a moment about a month later than is generally accepted.
Eliza visited France twice in 2019 (mid-June and around July 22) to see first-hand what the sky was like at that time. “The sky is never the same, something is always different”Kim explains. He says he believes it Van Gogh took these changes into account; In fact, it doesn’t have to be a single night, there can be days around.
Another key is that it refers to cicadas.. The authors attributed these mentions to July heat. An analysis of his letters highlights the crisis the artist was suffering by the end of that month. These are historical arguments (based on interpretations of documents and dates) that intersect with celestial reconstructions.
José Luis Aragon (National Autonomous University of Mexico) He is a physicist and studied painting, but did not participate in this study. “Still, I’d view the July date as an intriguing guess rather than a definitive answer.”.
In the MoMA files (where the paintings are kept) June 1889 still appears. At the museum they explain that this is a painting painted during the day (in several sessions) from a night vision. The city in the background (below the hill) is from another perspective (it was not visible from his window).
1889 sky reconstruction software
They worked on major software TheSkyX 10.5.0. They contrasted their configuration Stellarium 25.2.0. Contrasted with the positions of the planets and the Sun NASA ephemeris DE441. The researchers admit that this does not allow us to know when the painting began or whether there were any subsequent renovations.
Some of these tools are accessible to everyone. Stellarium is a free and open source planetarium (software). There are versions for Windows, macOS and Linux. It allows you to show what the sky looks like at a particular moment, and it’s also possible to change the speed at which time passes (to simulate the apparent movement of the stars).
There is also a NASA system (Horizon). Allows you to get the location table for an observer at a given location. This includes visibility data, document height above the horizon, sunrise and sunset, and even twilight markers. Thus we can analyze whether a more specific statement is true than the global similarity of two images.
This service is also designed for the general public (not just researchers or mission planners). A table of locations allows this possibility to be verified, although the date of the brushstroke requires other types of evidence.
On the other hand, visibility must also be considered. At Genbeta we have already talked about light pollution maps where the sky can be seen better. A historical reconstruction needs to consider where the star is (calculated) and visibility conditions separately.
Picture | Facebook with version, Xataka
