Interesting Discovery

Astronomers date Van Gogh's Starry Night a month later than thought

A group of South Korean researchers has proposed a new date for Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night. Art historians have long dated the work to June 1889, but in mid-June the moon was not the thin crescent shown in the painting. According to calculations by the group of Ilaija Chonhyu Kim, head of a Seoul telescope maker, the sky most similar to the one in the painting was seen in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence around 22 July 1889, before dawn. At that time the Hyades cluster in the constellation Taurus was rising in the east beside Venus, and according to a weather analysis the sky was fairly clear. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports. José Luis Aragón, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who did not take part in the study, regards the July date as an interesting hypothesis rather than a final answer.

Not covered in Armenian media (checked 23 October)