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Space Science

Van Gogh... the Astronomer 66

Posted by michael from the encyclopedia-brown dept.
chrissam writes "The Boston Globe is running a cool article about Vincent Van Gogh and the incredible astronomical accuracy in his depictions of heavenly objects in the night sky. An astronomy class from Southwest Texas State University have been able to pinpoint the exact date and time a recently discovered Van Gogh painting was done - 7pm, June 16, 1890 - based on the location of the painting's subject and the position of Venus in the night sky." The result is perhaps mundane - when a painting was painted is not earth-shattering news. But the process involved is fascinating.
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Van Gogh... the Astronomer More

Van Gogh... the Astronomer

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  • 'nuff said.
  • It's cool stories like this that keep me reading /.. Thanks for posting this one guys.
  • Only in a binary decision.

    --- [DrPsycho [zombo.com]] Coping with reality since 1975.

  • Scully: I'll start the autopsies...

  • As a struggling free software developer Van Gogh inspires me to continue. Here's a man who sold one picture in his lifetime and yet he never gave up his passion. I have a postcard with one of his self portraits on my desk at work.
  • I'm glad to note that you jest...

    I'm glad you (and the moderators) saw it that way. :-)

    For the record, I do believe Van Gogh was an extraordinarily talented artist. It's too bad the poor fellow was so psychologically tortured.
    --
    Patrick Doyle

  • It may be commercial, but a program, convieniently named "Starry Night" is available from starrynight.com [starrynight.com]. There is even a trial download for 15 days.


    --Xandu
  • I'm glad to note that you jest...

    Aside from that, there are so many other qualities to consider in a painting, rather than just the level of detail or so called accuracy. Color, texture, etc... Also, many of Van Gogh's paintings are quite distorted in terms of perspectives. It seems to have been done intentionally.
  • People like you are why other people think that being a geek is a bad thing. I'm a geek and I've never hidden that fact and I support my fellow geeks. Divinci was ultra cool in my opinion, but it certainly can't be denied that he was a geek.

    Its terrible that in our modern sophisticated society there is more prejudice against geeks than at any time in history. As I understand it back in the day DaVicni was considered so ultra cool that he got to hang out with the king and all that kind of stuff. Now we ignore geeks, and then when they start go get somewhere, we beat them down with every means possible.

  • DaVinci was a huge geek, just look at all the drawings and writings he did.
  • Thanks Matt. If I were a moderator, or if any moderators were still cruising this articles comments to "notice" you, I think you would be moderated up for that. :-)

  • SWT (Score:1)

    by Ksop ( 132400 )
    hey I goto SWT that docher dude is my physics prof. He reminds me of Big Gay Al in south park. weird to have my small school show up on slashdot. I will probably stop drawing cartoons durring class now and pay atention maybe someday slashdot will talk about me? then again maybe i will be a cartoonist and latter when im dead ill e on slashdot for cartooning some random meteor shower.
  • Similar story:

    On a school trip a few years back, the museum tour guide told us that meteorologists looked at Constable's paintings, the cloud formations were so accurately drawn that they could forecast the weather from them. She also noted that the weather forecast was about 60% accurate at the time, so maybe the weather men could look at the actual sky a bit harder.

    not_cub

  • Actually, Van Gogh did mix his colors.

    However, his painting techniques eventually led into pointilism, the use of small specks of color (like a computer screen) that, from a distance, give the illusion of multiple colors and gradiations.

    The classical example of pointilism is Seurat [texas.net]'s "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." In this image, you can zoom in on the specks of colors to see how the yellows next to blues look green. By the way, this painting took years to do and takes up an entire wall... it's huge!

  • That's not 'starry night'. This is [vangoghgallery.com]

    http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/p_0612.htm

  • Mulder? Who's this Mulder?
  • ...mmmm, Scully...
    ---
  • we could say he was a lunatic.
  • This is interesting. If this is legit, and Van Gogh was this accurate in his works, it would lead to a better understanding of his life, and who he was as a person. Very cool stuff.
  • Actually, the article is more about "White House," although "Starry Night" is mentioned in passing. The original link is the correct one, of "White House." [vangoghgallery.com]
  • Well, it's not news to me (though I agree that it's cool) because I get Sky & Telescope. But it was interesting to me to see it show up here in a non-disjoint, but seemingly pretty different, n% of the population.

    This leads me to wonder: how big is the overlap, anyway? Honk if you can find a constellation other than Orion, Ursa Major, or.. hm.. Southern Cross.

  • Van Goughs paintings are actually incrediably accurate, especially the nature ones. Like most artists, he would spend hours just sitting and watching a scene before committing anything to canvas. The details are all there, it's just how he represents them that makes him great. He saw the ordinary in a whole new way, and that wasn't just the Abstinth talking...

  • The result is perhaps mundane - when a painting was painted is not earth-shattering news.

    At a time when van Goughs are selling for tens of millions of dollars, and some "experts" are claiming that up to one third of all van Goughs are fakes, setting a date like this is invaluable, especially for a painting that has mysteriously appeared after so long. By tying down a date and a building in this fashion, it almost seals the provenance of the painting. It also fits with what we know about his style, method and speed at this point of time. This is a great example of how science has become more and more important in historical studies.

    The problem for art historians with van Gough is that he left very poor records of what he painted, partly because he sold so few of them, so we have no gallery sales records.

    One thing that does bug me, though, is that the only other person to identify the particular house in the painting was Dr Gachets son. The same "experts" who who think that many van Goughs are fakes, point the finger at Gachets son, a failed artist, as a possible culpruit for some of them.

  • Towards the end, van Gough was knocking off paintings in a matter of only a couple of hours as a deliberate technique. Because the paint didn't dry fully, the brushstrokes would bleed into each other, altering the colours and diffusing the edges to give that "blurry" effect.

    This is very different to his earlir pontilism period where he would paint a base colour, let it dry fully, then daub individual points of colour on the canvas, letting them dry fully so there was no bleeding or blurring.

    He also had the habit of doing two copies. For example, he knocked off a quick portrait to give to Dr Gachet, then made a better copy to keep for himself as a method of refining the composition and his technique.

  • Yes, but wouldn't that make that 90% of the world the mundanes?
  • Yeah, no kidding. I just got modded down. Man, I worked HARD on that joke.
  • You've obviously never watched Bob Ross. That guy can churn out a masterpiece in 30 minutes.

    Man, I love watching that guy. Although he did have a little preperation, he did most of his work in about 30 mins.
    Next we'll paint a happy little bush...there now he can be with his happy tree friends...

  • So is Carl Sagan, but they still run 'Cosmos.'
    Long Live Syndication(sp).
  • ... now if he'd have died a hundred years before the pinpointed time, that'd atleast be either eerie or funny.

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • People need to keep poking and picking on celebrity lives or else why is it that we keep at it relentlessly. I am sure many celebs get the reasons of their spontaneous action from such researchers.
  • makes you question how accurate the moderation system is around here...

  • Vincent [aol.com] Van Gogh [getmusic.com]

    Have you heard about the painter Vincent Van Gogh,
    Who loved color and who let it show.
    Now in the museum what have we here?
    The baddest painter since God's Jan Vermeer.
    He loved he loved he loved life so bad,
    His paintings had twice the color other paintings had.
    So bad so bad that the world had to know,
    The man loved color and he let it show.

    Well in the Amsterdam museum I was feeling bad,
    And trying to find a way not to be that sad.
    I felt the feeling in the room sincere,
    Vincent Van Gogh well he seemed so near.
    And he loved he loved he loved life like he did,
    HIs paintings had things that painters keep hid.
    He loved life so bad that the world had to know,
    He loved color and he let it show.

    OK, so what can we say about this Vincent Van Gogh?
    Ellie.
    He loved color and he let it show,
    Ok, Michael, now in the museum, what have we here?
    The baddest painter since Jan Vermeer.
    He loved he loved he loved life with that heart,
    His paintings took off where the other paintings just start.
    He loved life so bad that the world had to know,
    He loved color and he let it show.

    Alright.
    Have you heard about the painter Vincent Van Gogh?
    Who loved color and who let it show.
    Now in the museum what have we here?
    The baddest painter since God's Jan Vermeer.
    He loved he loved he loved life with a passion,
    His paintings said things that men generally don't do in that fashion.
    He loved life so bad that the world had to know,
    The man loved life folks and he let it show.
    Vincent Van Gogh, who we talkin' about?
    Vincent Van Gogh.

  • I'll bite. The exercise nurtures creativity and helps the brain to adapt by combining left/right brain activities.

    If you love God, burn a church!
  • these "Renaissance Men" (sorry for the spelling)...
    Now that's funny--someone on /. actually apologizing for correct spelling!

    If you love God, burn a church!
  • A friend (Hi, Graham!) uses this as a .sig:
    Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Vincent van Gogh
  • Hrm, just kind of a neat observation. I'm a hardware geek in a long line of artists. From talking with my father and sister I've realized that they see and remember differently than me. They see details that I don't see, but after they're described I can sort of see some of them. Things like the true colour of objects (heck, to me there's 8, just like in any respectable box of crayolas), the way light and shadow fade into each other and texture. They both seem to remember a great deal of these details as well.

    I've improved myself somewhat by following through on part of Betty Edward's The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain [amazon.com] but I still don't have the innate ability. It's still pretty interesting though, the sense of everything disappearing from my consiousness except for the artwork is very similar to what happens for me when working on a difficult and interesting engineering problem. I'm going to finish the book when I'm less overwhelmed with work.

  • That's not 'starry night'

    No, the painting in question is "White House At Night", a recently discovered painting. It says so in the article and in the story.

  • this painting probably wasn't painted on a specific date. It may represent a specific date, but paintings took months and months to prepare.

    From the article: "Van Gogh was in Auvers for the last 70 days before his death on July 29, 1890, and made 70 paintings during that period."

  • This reminds me of a story I heard at least 20 years ago, where someone was trying to look at the painted reflections in eyes to see if the painter painted himself or anything else, like the layout of the room, unknowingly, in the reflections.

    The story had an eerie feeling in it.

    Anyway, at least these people didn't calculate van Gogh as being in the middle of the northern Indian Ocean at 3:15:08 PM 453,667 BC.

  • Mr. Ross, he dead. [bobross.com]
  • i'm sure it's part of teh allure of his paintings
  • Yup, you should read about Da Vinci.

    All these "Renaissance Men" (sorry for the spelling) were very well-rounded; poetry, art, mathematics, astronomy, medicine!

    If Van Gogh were alive today he'd be moderating Slashdot while composing a sonata on his iMac and getting that Mir problem fixed.

    Here's to well-rounded humanity, may we find evidence of it in the modern world.
  • I really do like most of his paintings, but do we really want to delve too deeply into the mind of a man that cut off his own ear? :)

  • It's a novel by the Astronomer 'Bill Napier' (don't confuse it with the Asimov book of the same title). While it's already about Killer asteroids - a slashdot readers favourite topic - it also has a load of nice moments where people use historical documents for astronomy...

    Hell it's just a great read
  • Since there is no reference to the actual painting in the article, an image can be found here [vangoghgallery.com] at vangoghgallery.com [vangoghgallery.com].

    http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/p_0766.htm [vangoghgallery.com]

    Scott Ruttencutter
  • Considering the name of the class was Astronomy in Art, History, and Literature, I think it was very appropriate.
  • i'm probably popping into this discussion too late to get noticed, but here's something close to what you want:

    starry night painting generator [bewitched.com]

    although not exactly what you're after, it is stunningly beautiful, and most fun to play with.

    matt
  • Painters routinely do this, relocating a tree or a building for better effect.

    Perhaps Van Gogh may have been a great photographer had he been born in a later generation. Photographers have to find their compositions.

  • It sounds like either Van Gogh painted some unusually detailed and accurate paintings, or people are just reading too much into what are effectively works of fiction. Well, the house with the filled-in window was pretty impressive evidence of the former, so perhaps Van Gogh was more of a photographer than an artist.

    (Let the flames begin... :-)
    --
    Patrick Doyle
  • > That whole canvas in an hour.

    Um, no How about: Make a sketch of the outlines & positions of the objects in the scene for 1/4 hour, then fill in the details for as long as you want.
  • either that or...

    Van Gogh just randomly placed Venus in some Absinth induced stupor a week after what was predicted.

  • I think that this is very cool, not just in the way that is right up there - i.e. how they did it. But that it shows something about the "geek."

    You see, most people think of Astronomers as geek-science types, while they think of Van Gogh as an artist. And the two never meet, right? Yet many geeks out there have many different interests.

    Isn't it great to be a geek!

  • What I never realised was how quickly van Gogh painted.

    You've obviously never watched Bob Ross. That guy can churn out a masterpiece in 30 minutes.

    Of course I'm sure it would have been much easier to merely look up the date of the painting in an encyclopedia, than to run all over the globe trying to pinpoint the exact time and location of the painting.

    Will these guys try to figure out the various landscapes of Thomas Kinkade next?

    Dancin Santa
  • What I never realised was how quickly van Gogh painted. That whole canvas in an hour. Even over an hour I would expect to see the star appear as a line (as in long-exposure photography).

    Anyway, either van Gogh's perspective is out or that building has a very strangely shaped gable. Also, the gate posts are not parralel to the walls of the building, so either one of the references is wrong, or van Gogh's perspective is inaccurate. Given this, how can one say that he put the star in the right place?

    People have too much time on their hands...

  • Everything? (Score:3)

    by flimflam ( 21332 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @05:43AM (#394066)
    I found this quote interesting:
    ''Up until a few years ago, nobody knew this painting existed,'' said physics and astronomy professor Donald Olson, who led the field trip. ''Now we've solved all the questions about it. We used to know nothing about it, and now we know virtually everything.''

    It seems to me that the answered the time and date that it was painted, and from that obviously you can fit it into Van Gogh's biography to know what else was happening in his life around that time. Nevertheless, it seems a little arrogant to claim that you know everything about a painting. I mean, there are psychological factors that we can never really understand -- particularly in a painter like Van Gogh.

  • Re:Basic Logic Flaw (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @05:02AM (#394067) Homepage Journal
    One of the psychological traits that separate people who can draw vs. people who can't is acuity of visual memory. The average person can look at a picture and tell if its accurate or not with first hand knowledge of the scene, but draftsmen can actually reproduce the details of the scene from memory.

    Try drawing Darth Vader's mask, and if you're a normal person you'll draw something you know doesn't look right.

    I have a friend who can draw, and he could make an accurate depiction of Darth Vader's mask or Darth Maul's face if you asked him with no particular preparation. I'm sure if I showed him around a starry night he'd be able to depict it fairly accurately.

  • What if... (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @05:45PM (#394068) Journal
    Van Gogh decided "I think Venus would look better a little lower"?

    What if "Venus" is really an accidental splatter of paint he decided to make into a celestial object?

    There goes the estimate.

  • Re:Many gifts... (Score:3)

    by tokengeekgrrl ( 105602 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @07:44PM (#394069)
    Science and art are very closely related but for some reason, American culture tends to disassociate math and science from artistic creativity. I have always thought of artists as scientists given the amount of study, analysis and thought they put into creating their art be it painting, sculpture or music.

    I am a (mainly classical pianist) music geek before I am a computer geek. Music is very math oriented. The greatest composers and performers, classical or jazz, knew their theory inside and out. That's why they could create such amazing music. Then there's the fact that musical instruments were one of the first examples of applied physics, (the piano is particularly cool when studied from a physics perspective in my opinion), but I digress.

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • What about my starry night? (Score:3)

    by crashnbur ( 127738 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @05:44PM (#394070)
    I would be curious to see, based on this technology, what Starry Night would have looked like, had he painted it on my birthday. Or yours, for that matter. Or any other time. Someone should write a Starry Night generator. Yeah...

  • Re:What if... (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @06:17PM (#394071) Journal
    Van Gogh just randomly placed Venus in some Absinth induced stupor a week after what was predicted.

    What probably makes the painting communicate is that it rings true with one's own experience of a star filled night. Although these days, for most city folk, you need to get a hundred or so miles from the nearest large town. Many folks have never seen a star filled sky where everything is so bright that your mind boggles.

  • wtf? (Score:3)

    by Dr. Awktagon ( 233360 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @06:20PM (#394072) Homepage

    The result is perhaps mundane - when a painting was painted is not earth-shattering news.

    Uhm, I hope the /. folks don't mind my pointing out that MOST SLASHDOT NEWS is not earth-shattering, or even interesting to probably 90% of the world's population.

    Personally I think this is pretty cool.

  • Re:Van Gogh the photographer? (Score:4)

    by QuoteMstr ( 55051 ) <dan.colascione@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @05:57PM (#394073)
    Feh. Virmir used a camera obscura, a device that's like a camera with lenses but no film, and projects the light onto a light table. Virmir traced, and then filled in with paint. The result is quite increadlbe --- I believe one person called them "exquisuite, hand-painted photographs."

  • Van Gogh the Computer Scientist (Score:4)

    by the real jeezus ( 246969 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @07:37PM (#394074)

    Well, as long as he's an astronomer, he's also an early computer scientist. Ever looked really closely at one of his works? He used only primary colors and didn't mix them. Just like your monitor uses triads to color pixels. The placement of the strokes could be analyzed (we're talkin' lots of beowulf clusters here...) for the infinitessimal gradiations in spatial frequency that contribute to the unique colors.

    It is truly amazing how the artists (poets, musicians, etc... included) of the 18th & 19th centuries informed the inventions and cultures of later centuries. There is no way any of them could have imagined the place of their art in our society--or could they? Maybe something to do with absinthe. Anybody holdin?



    If you love God, burn a church!

  • Not That Big A Surprise (Score:5)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @06:48PM (#394075) Homepage
    The thing a lot of people don't know about art is how incredibly rooted in science and natural understanding it was (I say was, because the last half of the 20th century has moved away from this). Artists grew up keenly studying nature to try to understand natural aesthetics, and developed a set of unwritten standards that are used in virtually all masterpiece paintings. While we may associate this binding of art and science only with Renaissance artists, the fact is it existed throughout art history, and art has always been about representing the world according to natural laws.

    With that said, though, this painting probably wasn't painted on a specific date. It may represent a specific date, but paintings took months and months to prepare. For that one painting, van Gogh probably did no less than nine study paintings, each refining the position of every line, every stroke, and yes, the location of Venus. van Gogh could probably paint any sky he wanted to at any time he wanted to, and he would've known exactly where everything should be.

    It's kind of sad, actually, that such knowledge (and training) has to be rediscovered, but such are the ways of history.

  • The Painting Can Be Found Here (Score:5)

    by Cheshire Cat ( 105171 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @05:53PM (#394076) Homepage
    For those too lazy to use google, the painting in question can be found here. [vangoghgallery.com]

  • Conspiracy Theories 'R' Us (Score:5)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Wednesday February 28, 2001 @07:33PM (#394077)

    Scully: "But Mulder, how could a man like Van Gogh reproduce a perfect copy of the starscape at a given moment, when the painting would have taken hours, if not days, to paint?"

    Mulder: "Maybe a man like Van Gogh...wasn't a MAN at all!"

    Scully: "Are you suggesting...?"

    Mulder: "Yes, Scully. Aliens, taking the form of Renaissance artists, visited 19th century Europe, bestowing on European civilisation the Impressionist school of art, in an attempt to destroy the Neo-Classical school, with its tendency towards historical paintings, thus to prevent any historical paintings recording their many visits to earth from being recorded"

    Scully: "Yeah, I guess. You know I read in the National Inquirer that that Monet dude got anally probed..."

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