CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists doubling as art detectives have traced Vincent van Gogh’s “ The Starry Night ” to a celestial scene that suggests a new date for one of the world’s most famous paintings.
Their findings indicate that rather than being a product of van Gogh’s imagination, “The Starry Night” may have been inspired by what he saw as he gazed heavenward from his French asylum 137 years ago.
A South Korean team reported Thursday that after years of forensic astronomy and research into the Dutch artist, they have matched his masterpiece to a predawn sky over France’s Saint-Remy de Provence right around July 22, 1889.
That’s a month later than the long-accepted time frame for the postimpressionist painting depicting a crescent moon and Venus surrounded by a sky of swirling stars with a village nestled below and cypress trees looming on one side.
Art historians have long dated the painting to June 1889, soon after Van Gogh checked into the asylum. He’d cut off his left ear several months earlier during an argument with painter Paul Gauguin.
A team led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, the CEO of a Seoul telescope maker, is now disputing that date in a study appearing in the journal Scientific Reports.
The sky that is most similar to the painting occurred around July 22, 1889, said Kim, who is also a doctoral candidate at Kyung Hee University. He noted that the few days before and after could have inspired van Gogh as well.
“No two skies are the same. Something always changes. I believe Vincent noticed those changes and put them into the painting,” Kim said in an email.
He added: “I am confident that July 22 is the better date. I will bet on this date.”
The latest study addresses “a real puzzle” that in mid-June 1889, the moon was not the thin crescent painted by van Gogh, said Jose Luis Aragon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has studied “The Starry Night” as a physicist, but did not take part in the new research.
“Still, I would see the July date as an intriguing hypothesis rather than a settled answer,” Aragon said in an email.
Long fascinated by van Gogh’s art, Kim traveled to France in 2019, the first time in mid-June and the second around July 22. He found brilliant stars rising in July’s predawn sky, unlike June.
Kim and his team discovered through further celestial sleuthing that around July 22, 1889, the shape of the moon before dawn appeared like the one in the painting, with the Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus rising in the east alongside Venus. The sky should have been clear enough for van Gogh to see all this, based on their weather analyses.
Van Gogh is thought to have suffered a seizure around that time in July. But Kim and his team contend that the seizure occurred later in July, based on their analyses of letters between the painter and one of his brothers. Some of those letters refer to cicadas, another clue that points toward the hotter July, according to Kim.
The researchers tested and verified their methods on night skies in other paintings, making for what Aragon considers “a careful and genuinely interdisciplinary study.”
Since van Gogh painted in a studio at the asylum from sketches and memory, “the sky is likely a composite of many nights as the authors themselves acknowledge," Aragon said.
“What I find most convincing is the broader message: The painting is not pure fantasy. Van Gogh watched the real sky very closely," Aragon said.
Despite all his research, Kim has never seen “The Starry Night” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“Now that the paper is out, I really have to go and see ‘The Starry Night’ in person, don’t I?” he said.
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FILE - Visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston view Vincent van Gogh's painting, "The Starry Night," on Oct. 17, 2003, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Serbia 's protesting youth movement gathered Thursday at the final campaign rally ahead of a tense weekend parliamentary election in a challenge to the Balkan country's powerful populist strongman Aleksandar Vucic.
Crowds streamed into Belgrade's central Slavija square from all directions, also filling several blocks of streets around the area. The flag-waving, boisterous crowds chanted “Victory” in a wave of optimism ahead of Sunday's early vote that comes after almost two years of student-led protests against Vucic's tight rule in the Balkan country.
Support for the student movement has grown since the protests first started in November 2024. Their Students' List election ticket is polling neck and neck with Vucic's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party despite the ruling populists' tight control over mainstream media and all institutions in the country.
Drama student Natalija Stepanovic told the crowd that “three more days are left and they will pass.”
“So will fear, blackmail, injustice,” she added. “Tyrants will pass, like they always do, but the people of this country never will and they will stand tall as a monument to our joint struggle.”
Analysts say that a close result could make the outcome uncertain and pave the way for potential post-election instability if both sides declare victory after polls close on Sunday. Vucic, who controls the police, has said that any unrest after the vote would be swiftly quashed.
Scores of students have been detained in the past two years as the government cracked down on the protests to curb them. Vucic has been campaigning fiercely against his opponents ahead of the election, accusing the students of being financed from abroad to destroy the country.
International election monitors and the European Union have expressed concern about the safety and fairness of the ballot that has been marred by near-total government control over the media, reports of surveillance and cyber attacks on activists and a deeply polarized society.
Vucic held his closing rally also on Thursday at a sports hall in a separate part of Belgrade before several thousand people. He said he expects a victory by a margin of several hundred thousand votes in favor of his SNS party. He then participated in a radio show before a scheduled evening appearance on the state RTS broadcaster.
“We'll see what the result will be,” he conceded on Radio Belgrade, predicting a "tough, uncertain struggle.” Vucic added that “nothing special will happen” on election night and that “those who win will celebrate.”
While several minor parties are also in the race, observers say that the referendum-like atmosphere between Vucic and the students' movement could push most of the other groups below the 3% threshold necessary to make it to the 250-member Parliament.
“There is hope for the first time in like 30 years,” Marina Popov Taparicki from Belgrade said. "People want change.”
Igor Zecevic, also from Belgrade, added that "the students woke us up, woke everybody up in this country, and we just have to do our thing now, we have to get out, we have to vote.”
Slavija Square in Belgrade was the scene of a huge anti-government protest last March. That rally ended in a sudden disruption that experts later said — and the government denied — involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.
Critics accuse Vucic of rampant corruption, ties to organized crime and a crackdown on democratic freedoms, particularly the media, which he has denied. Suspicions of high-level graft in state railway projects triggered student-led protests after a collapsed canopy at a train station in Serbia’s north killed 16 people in November 2024.
People take part in the final "Student List – Students Win" rally ahead of a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
People shine the lights of they mobile phones and light flares during the final "Student List – Students Win" rally ahead of a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
People hold a cutout of Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic during the final "Student List – Students Win" rally ahead of a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
People take part in the final "Student List – Students Win" rally ahead of a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
People take part in the final "Student List – Students Win" rally ahead of a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
