A team of researchers claims the Hyades star cluster may form the heart of van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Others aren’t so sure.

Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night"

For more than a century, the swirling sky in Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” has hovered between astronomical observation and artistic imagination. Now, a study suggests new evidence may match it to the predawn sky of July 22, 1889.

Reconstructing van Gogh’s view from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in France, the researchers used three celestial landmarks as clues: a waning crescent Moon, brilliant Venus, and the V -shape Hyades star cluster. “Around July 22nd is the dawn when all three match the painting at once,” says team member Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, CEO of of SLLAB, Inc.

Comparing an earlier landscape sketch with photographs of a proposed site to estimate the painting’s field of view, the team then used astronomical simulations and measurements of the painted star pattern to test the proposed alignment.…