Astronomers say van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ may have been inspired by real celestial arrangement

Art Images/Hulton Fine Art Collection/ Getty Images

For more than a century, Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” was believed to have been the result of imagination, previous drawings and memories of scenes he had seen outside his barred asylum bedroom window in France.

However, the 1889 artwork was probably rooted much more in observation than fantasy, according to scientists in South Korea who say they have identified the actual night sky potentially depicted by the post-impressionist Dutch painter.

An exuberant pre-dawn sky — filled with large, bright stars, a luminous crescent moon, and blue and white swirls — dominates the landscape featuring a prominent cypress tree and distant hillside village.

This skyscape resembles the celestial arrangement present in the sky in the early hours of July 22, 1889, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports .

Researchers from South Korean space science company SLLAB and Kyung Hee University in Seoul used a separate van Gogh drawing considered to show the landscape of “The Starry Night” to identify the hilly site he saw.

They placed the landscape southwest of the asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, southern France, where van Gogh created the oil on canvas during a 12-month stay.

Kim et al., Scientific Reports (2026)

The researchers created a simulation of the sky above that hilly site in the early hours of July 22, 1889. It showed the moon and Venus positioned in opposite corners of the frame, with the moon high in the top right corner and Venus at the bottom left.

In between them both lay the Hyades cluster, which is formed of hundreds of stars in the Taurus constellation. Five bright stars in this constellation are known to be visible to the naked eye without a telescope, and the Hyades star cluster is known to form a bright “V” shape.

In van Gogh’s painting, the moon is positioned in the top right corner, diagonally above Venus, which is center left, with other stars positioned left of the moon.

“A painter does not draw stars at their true size or orientation. A star cluster on the canvas may be larger or smaller than in reality, and slightly tilted,” lead study author Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, an astronomer and engineer and the CEO of SLLAB, told CNN over email.

So, the researchers used a Procrustes shape analysis, which “removes differences in position, size and rotation and then compares only the ‘shape’ of two sets of points,” he said, enabling them to closely match five stars in the central arrangement in “The Starry Night” with the Hyades cluster arrangement that night.

“The relative positions of the stars preserve the skeleton of the Hyades,” the researchers concluded, adding that this indicates the “work did not invent a sky that was not there but transferred an observed arrangement onto canvas through stylistic amplification.”

The same statical shape analysis also allowed the researchers to map van Gogh’s 1888 oil painting “Café Terrace at Night” on to the Summer Triangle star pattern.

“The Starry Night” was painted in mid-June of 1889, according to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it is housed.

This dating by art historians is based on a letter van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo around June 18, in which he mused, “At last I have a landscape with olive trees, and also a new study of a starry sky,” according to the researchers.

However, around that time, the moon appeared almost full, according to the study, rather than the waning crescent shape van Gogh depicted.

“Also, around June 19 is close to the summer solstice, when no impressive stars rise in the pre-dawn sky,” Kim told CNN. “Around July 22, by contrast, the Hyades rose in the east together with Venus, and the moon’s shape was close to the crescent in the painting.”

The newly proposed July time period is supported by a previous examination of van Gogh’s canvas, which suggests the artist left places for the stars unpainted, only filling in those gaps after the blue sky was done. The researchers said this confirms that his star pattern “was a structure intended in advance” and “deliberately planned.”

Van Gogh has long been thought to have had a seizure in mid-July that potentially left him incapacitated in the weeks following, which could have made it impossible for him to observe and paint the sky at that time, the researchers said.

However, they re-examined original French and Dutch letters, as well as contemporary weather records, finding that the seizure could have occurred in late July and potentially only lasted a day or two.

“The authors put forward an engaging framework that combines astronomical modeling, historical meteorological data, and letter analysis to propose a late-July 1889 observational window,” Yongxiang Huang, an associate professor at the Center for Marine Meteorology and Climate Change at Xiamen University in China, told CNN over email.

However, despite this “fresh” perspective, “astronomical alignments on a canvas must be interpreted with caution,” said Huang, who was not involved in the study.

He added that “Vincent van Gogh was a Post-Impressionist master, not an optical camera,” and “attempting to pinpoint an exact date primarily based on celestial coordinates painted onto a canvas remains fragile.”

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Turbulent skies of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ align with a scientific theory, study finds

In 2024, Huang found that the swirls in “The Starry Night” align with a physical law that governs fluid dynamics known as Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence, “reflecting an intuitive capture of complex natural flows,” he said.

Yet, “flow patterns depicted by artists often diverge markedly from exact physical reality due to aesthetic intent, emotional expression, and stylization.” Similarly, “an artist’s depiction of celestial geometry is inherently prone to painterly distortion, subjective rearrangement, and human error.”

“Being an artist, Vincent likely mixed ‘imagination’ and ‘observation,’” astronomer Ulrike Kuchner, an interdisciplinary art-science researcher, curator and artist who was not involved in the study, told CNN over email. “For example, the most obvious mismatch with the June date is the shape of the moon. What if he simply didn’t like the fuller moon and used his artistic licence?”

Kuchner described the paper as “exciting detective work,” saying: “If the date changes, the history books on his medical history need updating too, because the timing of his seizure, or his ability to paint afterwards, would have to be revised.”

She noted, however, that the fundamental question of whether the artwork was a spontaneous fantasy or a realistic depiction based on observation is “never really addressed” by the research.

The new study was limited by 19th-century meteorological records, which predate standardized observation and may not have the precision of modern records.

The research also cannot determine when van Gogh began painting the artwork and whether he later reworked the canvas.

Sunny Celeste/imageBROKER/Shutterstock

Genetic clues may be hiding in Leonardo da Vinci’s artwork

While the star cluster on July 22, 1889, best fits the central star arrangement in “The Starry Night,” the researchers said they assume observations of the sky over several nights were integrated into the artwork.

“The order of brushstrokes or any later reworking cannot be determined by astronomy, so what we propose is the possibility that Vincent conceived the idea in June and completed the painting after July 22,” Kim said.

“This is my personal opinion rather than a result of our study, but given the way Vincent worked, it is also possible that he completed a painting that had been left unfinished in a very short time,” he added. “The canvas of ‘The Starry Night’ has quite a lot of bare areas where no paint was applied. This fits with the possibility that the work was done in a hurry.”

Kim said finding more historical French weather records and letters sent from van Gogh to other painters, if any survive and mention “The Starry Night,” could determine even more precisely when the painting was created.

艺术图片/霍顿美术收藏/盖蒂图片社

一个多世纪以来，人们一直认为文森特·梵高的《星夜》是他根据之前的绘画作品以及对法国精神病院卧室窗外景象的记忆而创作的。

然而，韩国科学家表示，他们已经确定了这位后印象派荷兰画家可能描绘的真实夜空，因此，1889 年的这幅艺术作品可能更多地源于观察而非幻想。

黎明前的天空绚丽多彩，繁星点点，一弯明亮的新月，以及蓝白相间的漩涡，构成了一幅壮丽的景象，远处耸立着一棵高大的柏树和山坡上的村庄。

根据周四发表在《科学报告》杂志上的一项研究，这片天空景象与 1889 年 7 月 22 日凌晨的天象相似。

来自韩国空间科学公司 SLLAB 和首尔庆熙大学的研究人员利用另一幅被认为描绘了《星夜》风景的梵高素描，确定了他所看到的丘陵地点。

他们将这幅风景画放置在精神病院西南方向，靠近法国南部圣雷米-德-普罗旺斯，梵高在那里住了 12 个月，期间创作了这幅布面油画。

Kim等人，《科学报告》（2026）

研究人员模拟了 1889 年 7 月 22 日凌晨该丘陵地带上空的天空。模拟结果显示，月亮和金星分别位于画面的对角，月亮高悬于右上角，金星则位于左下角。

在它们之间是毕星团，它由金牛座中的数百颗恒星组成。已知金牛座中有五颗明亮的恒星无需借助望远镜即可用肉眼看到，而毕星团则呈现出明亮的“V”字形。

在梵高的画作中，月亮位于右上角，斜上方是位于左侧中间的金星，其他星星则位于月亮的左侧。

“画家画的星星并非它们的真实大小或方向。画布上的星团可能比实际更大或更小，也可能略微倾斜，”该研究的主要作者、天文学家兼工程师、SLLAB首席执行官Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim通过电子邮件告诉CNN。

因此，研究人员采用了普氏形状分析法，这种方法“消除了位置、大小和旋转的差异，然后只比较两组点的‘形状’”，他说，这使他们能够将《星夜》中心排列的五颗星与当晚毕星团的排列进行精确匹配。

研究人员总结道：“恒星的相对位置保留了毕星团的骨架”，并补充说，这表明“这幅作品并没有凭空捏造一片不存在的天空，而是通过风格上的夸张，将观察到的景象转移到了画布上”。

同样的统计形状分析方法也让研究人员能够将梵高 1888 年的油画《夜晚的咖啡馆》映射到夏季大三角的星图上。

据收藏该画作的纽约现代艺术博物馆称，《星夜》创作于 1889 年 6 月中旬。

艺术史学家根据梵高在6月18日左右写给他弟弟提奥的一封信来确定这幅画的创作日期。据研究人员称，梵高在信中沉思道：“我终于画了一幅有橄榄树的风景画，还有一幅新的星空习作。”

然而，根据这项研究，大约在那个时候，月亮看起来几乎是满月，而不是梵高所描绘的残月形状。

金告诉CNN：“此外，6月19日左右接近夏至，黎明前的天空中不会出现特别耀眼的星星。相比之下，7月22日左右，毕星团与金星一同从东方升起，月亮的形状也接近画中的新月形。”

新提出的七月时间段得到了先前对梵高画作研究的支持。该研究表明，梵高在画作中特意留出一些空白区域，待蓝天完成后才填充星空。研究人员表示，这证实了他的星空图案“是预先设计好的”，并且是“经过精心规划的”。

研究人员表示，人们一直认为梵高在七月中旬癫痫发作，这可能导致他在接下来的几周内丧失行动能力，也可能使他当时无法观察和描绘天空。

然而，他们重新检查了法国和荷兰的原始信件以及当时的气象记录，发现扣押事件可能发生在 7 月下旬，并且可能只持续了一两天。

“作者提出了一个引人入胜的框架，结合天文模型、历史气象数据和信件分析，提出了 1889 年 7 月下旬的观测窗口，”中国厦门大学海洋气象与气候变化研究中心副教授黄永祥通过电子邮件告诉 CNN。

然而，尽管有这种“新颖”的视角，但“画布上的天文排列必须谨慎解读”，并未参与这项研究的黄说道。

他补充说，“文森特·梵高是一位后印象派大师，而不是一台光学相机”，而且“试图主要根据画在画布上的天体坐标来确定确切日期仍然很脆弱”。

Timothy A. Clary/法新社/盖蒂图片社

研究发现，梵高名画《星夜》中波涛汹涌的天空与一项科学理论相吻合。

2024 年，黄发现《星夜》中的漩涡与支配流体动力学的物理定律——科尔莫戈罗夫湍流理论——相吻合，“反映了对复杂自然流动的直观捕捉，”他说。

然而，“由于审美意图、情感表达和风格化，艺术家所描绘的流动模式往往与精确的物理现实存在显著差异。”同样，“艺术家对天体几何的描绘本身就容易受到绘画技巧的扭曲、主观的重新排列和人为误差的影响。”

“作为一名艺术家，文森特很可能将‘想象’和‘观察’结合起来了，”天文学家乌尔里克·库奇纳（Ulrike Kuchner）通过电子邮件告诉CNN。库奇纳是一位跨学科的艺术科学研究员、策展人和艺术家，她并未参与这项研究。“例如，与六月日期最明显的不符之处在于月亮的形状。如果他只是不喜欢满月，而运用了他的艺术手法呢？”

库奇纳将这篇论文描述为“激动人心的侦探工作”，并表示：“如果日期发生变化，那么关于他病史的历史书籍也需要更新，因为他癫痫发作的时间，或者他之后的绘画能力，都必须进行修正。”

但她指出，该研究“从未真正解决”艺术作品是自发的幻想还是基于观察的现实描绘这一根本问题。

这项新研究受限于 19 世纪的气象记录，这些记录早于标准化观测，可能不如现代记录精确。

该研究也无法确定梵高何时开始创作这幅画作，以及他后来是否对画布进行过修改。

Sunny Celeste/imageBROKER/Shutterstock

基因线索可能隐藏在达芬奇的画作中。

虽然 1889 年 7 月 22 日的星团与《星夜》中的中心星群排列最为吻合，但研究人员表示，他们推测这幅艺术作品融合了几个夜晚的星空观测结果。

金说：“天文学无法确定笔触顺序或任何后续修改，因此我们提出的可能是，文森特在6月份构思了这幅画，并在7月22日之后完成了这幅画。”

“这只是我个人的观点，并非我们研究的结论，但考虑到梵高的创作方式，他也有可能在很短的时间内完成了一幅未完成的画作，”他补充道。“《星夜》的画布上有很多空白区域，没有涂抹颜料。这符合这幅画作匆忙完成的可能性。”

金表示，如果能找到更多法国历史气象记录以及梵高写给其他画家的信件（如果这些信件幸存下来并提到《星夜》的话），就可以更精确地确定这幅画的创作时间。