🌠The When of Starry Night
Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, Suna Kang, Jungwoo Song, and Ho Jin in The actual sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: a multidisciplinary reconstruction:
At dawn around 22 July 1889, the waning-crescent Moon, Venus, and the Hyades cluster gather within that narrow frame, while the asterism’s geometry, contemporary weather records, and the letters independently converge on the same date. These findings suggest that the night sky in The Starry Night originated from observation of a specific celestial arrangement, and call for reconsidering the June dating. This framework can extend to historical night paintings as a reproducible scientific art history.
Some serious research and facinating detective work.