Hardly any of us have ever grown tired of waterfalls or the full Moon ascending over a mountainous or urban horizon. We persistently fall speechless at the singular spectacle that is a total solar eclipse. Who can turn away from the crescent Moon and Venus, together, suspended in the twilight skies? Islam couldn’t. That juxtaposition of a “star” with the crescent Moon remains a sacred symbol of the faith. Vincent van Gogh couldn’t turn away either. On June 21, 1889,3 he captured it from the pre-dawn skies in Saint-Rémy, France, creating what is perhaps his best-known painting, The Starry
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