VMs: Re: van Gogh (was Pleiades)

[Greg Stachowski <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jan and Dennis having brought up van Gogh, I was reminded of the following
- it turns out that, despite whatever medical issues there might have
been, van Gogh was interested in astronomy and quite capable of depictions 
of the night sky accurate enough to be recognizable and even datable. For 
example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1209614.stm

and

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/forum/forum_18a.htm
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/forum/forum_18.htm

I guess the moral of the story is that, in this day and age of digital
imaging and electronic measurement, it is sometimes far too easy to
dismiss both the ability of individuals to observe the night sky (and
indeed the world around them) and to represent those observations on
simple sketches; a drawing need not be millimetre-precise with gridlines
and such to depict the salient points of an observation. As far as the VMS
is concerned, it may indeed be that the star maps _are_ just visions,
migrane-induced or otherwise, but the fact that they appear _simple_
should not be used as an argument against them.

Cheers,

Greg
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