The stars have always been a source of inspiration for artists, but perhaps if we have to elect the most iconic work in which the stars appear, we would certainly refer to Van Gogh's Starry Night. In it, the artist managed to transfer onto canvas the emotion aroused by a beautiful alignment between the Moon and the planet Venus. The painting was painted during his convalescence period at the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is not certain when Vincent painted the work. Some scholars attribute the date of 19 June 1889 to the painting, but there are several references to a Starry Night in letters written to his brother Theo before that date, such as letter 777, which explicitly mentions a ‘ the starry night and the landscape with yellow greenery which was in the walnut frame’. Astronomically, the alignment seems to be closer to what was possible to observe on the morning of 23 May 1889. On that date, the Moon in Aquarius was shown with a sickle lit by about 37% in contrast to the same configuration on 19 June of the same year in which the Moon showed a waning phase lit by about 63%. Recently, a scientific study has also shown that Van Gogh carefully observed the actual movements of turbulence, representing them accurately in terms of shape, distance, and intensity by the laws governing turbulent flows.

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