One would have to know my history with astronomical bodies to appreciate this information shared below on Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” masterpiece. It began in February 1972, on an evening as I was escorted down the steps of my dorm at Auburn University to attend a get-acquainted mixer at Dean Carter Social Center for sweetheart candidates for Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity. I was Delta Zeta’s candidate. As my escort and I walked, my eye caught sight of a shooting star. It stirred a sense of anticipation, an omen for something propitious that made me smile. It was the night I met Bill Byrd. He was without a doubt, the most handsome and intriguing man in the room that night to me. Ever since the moment I saw him, I have associated celestial lights with Bill.
Years later, in early December 1994, I was driving home to Panama City after a day of preparations for the upcoming wedding of our son, Billy, and Joni Stinson, which was to be December 22nd. There was a beautiful full moon that evening. As I drove home I was praying and asking God to please bless their relationship, that this would be the right union. I looked at the gorgeous full moon rising to my left as I finished my prayer. Then, as I looked south, back toward the road ahead, a shooting star flew across my vision the full width of my windshield from left to right. I burst into tears of joy and began praising snd thanking God for such a personal assurance for them. Years later, when granddaughter Riley Donlon was about 4-5, she had a picture book featuring Van Gogh’s painting. It became one of her favorite images! She would later study in France, visit art museums and experience night sky images in Van Gogh’s home country. During a trip to a Christmas market in Atlanta around 2019, I purchased a shawl in fine wool that bears a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. When I read the post copied below I sent it to Riley as one more connection to our shared interest in celestial lights. Than I saw something that took my breath….. Researchers have determined that the alignment and variation of brightness of the stars in Van Gogh’s painting match the sky on a particular evening that can be observed by using technology that now allows astronomers to “roll” images of the sky’s landmarks forward or backward in time. The date of star placement that matches Van Gogh’s painting is July 22, 1889…… The date Bill and I were married is July 22, 1972. Same month and day, 83 years after Van Gogh’s memorialization of that night’s stars!
In the sweet way God gives me insights through use of numbers, i realized that “7/22” is “grace (7) as “two individuals walk on the path of Christ (22)!’, Christ representing the first and primary “2” figure to whom we match our steps. “1972” speaks of “God” (1), with “certainty, aligned with His eternal will” (9), “7” the number of “grace”, and “2” “in keeping with Christ. “. That meeting at Dean Cater Social Center was no chance encounter. The night of the star, the meeting there was by God’s design. The connection to Van Gogh’s painting, too, is in the year it was painted, 1889. In God’s numeric prayer language with me, that speaks of “God” (1) “being present but not well known, with uncertainty about Him” (8), in the beginning of these connections, but maturing from “uncertainty” (8) to “assured, confident knowing “ (9) over time. God moved me from a state of being “18” through the years of our marriage from an “8” to a “9”. I was not only a “1” (believing in God) and an “8”, (with a lot of doubts and uncertainties about God), but was also 18 years old when we married! It is true, God used Bill greatly to teach me about God’s own character and His ways of dealing with people, not because Bill was perfect (nor was I!) but because we learned together about life and God and grew closer to God, in Christ through the Holy Spirit at work, and also grew closer to one another in the process. “89” may be my expiration date. Or it may just be spiritual shorthand for another year in which God reveals more to me that inspires even greater confidence! The 83 years between Van Gogh’s Starry Night and the year of our wedding may simply represent how mysterious and unknown (8) the fullness God’s will, worked out in our lives through cooperation with the Holy Spirit (3), really is! CBB. 10/25/26
“Before dawn on July 22, 1889, a waning crescent Moon, brilliant Venus and a glittering star cluster hung over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
More than 130 years later, scientists think they may have found the exact sky that Vincent van Gogh painted.
A new study in Scientific Reports suggests that “The Starry Night” is not pure imagination. It shows a real view: the Moon, Venus. and the Hyades cluster in Taurus. Researchers compared the shape of the painted stars with the real ones, and the pre-dawn sky of July 22, 1889 matched every condition.
Art historians have long believed the painting was made in June. Now the team suggests Van Gogh may have conceived the idea then, and finished it after seeing this very sky.
And here is the part that gives us goosebumps: the Hyades are about 150 light-years away. The light Van Gogh saw had left those stars before the United States even existed. It travelled through the darkness for well over a century, just to reach one man’s eyes and become a masterpiece.
In 1888 he wrote that he wanted to paint a starry sky, just as he would paint a meadow full of dandelions. Today, we may finally know which night gave him that dream.
The most famous sky in art history was real. ✨
Have you ever looked up and felt something you could not put into words?” (From Beyond Our Planet Facebook post seen 10/25/26)
