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From Larry Cothren

I admire the dedication of the American team that travelled to France to verify the time and place of Van Gogh’s painting of the rising moon (7 June, p 12). It seems to me that their report contained some errors – but also the seed for a new interpretation of Van Gogh.

According to the astronomy software program Starry Night Pro, which allows one to travel through time and space to witness astronomical events, there was no full moon in Saint-Remy, France, on either 16 May or 13 July 1889.

The full moon that appeared at 19:20 local time in St Remy on 12 July 1889 was partially eclipsed as it rose. By the time it had cleared the low hills east of Saint-Remy, the moon would have been fully eclipsed by the penumbra. By 21:08 local time, the moon’s disc was also half covered by the Earth’s umbra. Since the moon often glows with an orange or coppery light in a penumbral and umbral eclipse, is it not possible that Evening Landscape with Rising Moon was painted on the evening of 12 July 1889, and accurately represented what was, in fact, an orange moon?

And, if the moon were an orange-copper colour, couldn’t the freshly mown hay in the foreground also have taken on an orange hue? Perhaps Van Gogh wasn’t hallucinating but was merely painting what he saw – and therefore his entry into the asylum was unwarranted or, at the least, premature?

Now, about that green sky…

Joanna Marchant writes:

• The astronomers considered 12 July, but realised that on that day the moon would have risen 10-moon-diameters away from the unusual cliff feature shown in the painting. The nearly full moon on 13 July rose where it appears in the painting.

Adelaide, South Australia