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by
Cristina Rodriguez
 The
vivid orange-red moon peeking behind a cliff in Vincent van Gogh's
Moonrise intrigued physicist Donald Olson.
It wasn't just the art that interested the Southwest Texas State
University professor. He thought the painting would be a useful lesson in
astronomy. Whether the painting depicted a moonrise or sunrise was in
dispute until the 1930s, when historians found a letter van Gogh had
written to his brother, Theo, that described the painting as a moon.
Still, the letter wasn't dated, a rare omission among hundreds of
letters the Dutch master wrote while institutionalized in a Saint Remy
monastery. The envelope - and postmark - were long gone and its
authenticity was questioned.
So, Olson decided to travel to France to find out exactly when
van Gogh saw the moonrise. After tracking the moon's cycle, he narrowed it
down to 9:08 p.m. July 13, 1889, give or take a minute.
"A physicist likes to solve any kind of puzzle or
problem," Olson said.
Olson, his wife, Marilynn, and a fellow physics lecturer Russell
Doescher spent six days last year hunting for the exact spot where van
Gogh stood as he painted Moonrise, and taking measurements of the
distinctive landscape van Gogh had painted more than a dozen times: the
shed beside a stone wall, rounded hills, an overhanging cliff.
A peculiar "double house" wasn't visible, though,
because 15-metre-high pine trees now cover the distant hills where the
house had appeared.
"After an hour and a half, we eventually found that double
house," Olson said. "That was the last piece we hadn't seen to
prove we were in the right place."
They returned to Texas and plugged the co-ordinates into a
computer, which started searching for the exact date and time in 1889 when
a full or nearly full moon peaked behind the cliff between May and
September.
May 16 and July 13 came up, but the team eliminated May because
van Gogh had written in a letter that the fields were green in May. The
fields in the painting are golden.
From there, the computer calculated a two-minute window in which
the moon would have been partly behind the cliff in the painting.
The project was published in the July 2003 edition of Sky and
Telescope magazine.
It's the second time Olson has tracked van Gogh. Two years ago,
he determined the moment in time captured in White House at Night. Before
that, he analysed Ansel Adams photographs.
Paul Tucker, art history professor at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, uses examples of what he calls Olson's "marvellous"
work in class, he said.
"It is careful and serious and technologically
precise," Tucker said. "The precision which is so elusive in the
world of art and interpreting poetic statements is a refreshing and useful
foundation."
He said the outcome "locks van Gogh's devotion to nature
into a relationship that is both irrefutable and wonderfully poetic."
Bob Harrison of Montreal, a van Gogh expert who has archived the
artist's letters online, said Olson's work has made the archiving easier.
Besides the historical significance, Harrison said the projects
can "bring the paintings to life."
Olson's work isn't limited to
art. He has also used astronomy to explain a Canterbury Tales passage in
which a 14th-century solar eclipse created tides that caused boulders to
disappear. 
 Physics
professor Don Olson discovered the moon in Vincent van Gogh's
"Moonrise" was visible to the painter at 9:08 p.m. July 13,
1889.
Reprinted
by expressed permission of the author.
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