A waning crescent Moon and a cluster of swirling stars fill the predawn sky over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889). A new study argues the scene reflects a real celestial arrangement that Van Gogh could have seen from his window around July 22, 1889. Credit: Museum of Modern Art/Wikimedia Commons

For decades, art historians and astronomers have wondered whether the sky of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night shows real stars or imagined ones. A new study argues the stars are real — and that Van Gogh likely saw them a month later than most scholars thought.

The study, published Oct. 22 in Scientific Reports , comes from a team led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, CEO of the South Korean telescope maker SLLAB and a Ph.D.…