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Astronomers Just Figured Out When Van Gogh Painted ‘The Starry Night,’ and It’s Surprisingly Specific

Astronomers analyzed the stars, moon, weather, and Van Gogh’s letters to identify a surprisingly specific date of The Starry Night.

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If you spend too much time with a piece of art, your romantic sense of it might give way to a nerdy, analytical mindset that brings you dangerously close to “um actually” levels of pedantry. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is one of the most famous paintings on Earth, and as such, it has led thousands, perhaps millions, of people to wonder what time of year it was painted. A team of researchers might have figured it out.

According to a study published in Scientific Reports led by astronomer Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, the iconic painting that seems like it couldn’t have been set at any specific real-world time, and probably not even set on this planet, as it seems more like........

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