Is The Starry Night a painting of galaxies?

Between 16 and 18 June 1889, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh created one of his most famous works from the view out of an asylum window: The Starry Night.

Debate on the masterpiece's distinctive 'swirls' has raged ever since, with many saying they wereextensions of his fragile state at the time.

But now an artist has claimed that the spirals actually depict galaxies in the universe, and were likely inspired by drawings of the cosmos at the time.

The claim was made by American artist and photographer Michael Benson in his new book, Cosmigraphics, reported PRI.

He says, it is a drawing of the Whirlpool Galaxy -- official designation M51a -- by Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, in the mid 19th century.

To observe the night sky, Lord Rosse built the largest telescope at the time with which he observed the galaxy and made his drawing.

“We believe that drawing led directly to Starry Night, the most famous artistic depiction of the night sky,” said Benson.

“Either it was in the library of the asylum in the south of France, or he saw it in Paris.”

At the time, van Gogh was in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Southern France -- and the painting is a depiction of his view out of the window.

The technique of using swirls later appeared in many more of van Gogh's work -- although whether they were inspired by the Whirlpool Galaxy drawing or not may never be known for sure.

The Whirlpool Galaxy is about 23 million light-years away and is roughly the size of the Milky Way at about 60,000 light-years in diameter.

Interestingly, it was the first galaxy found to have a spiral structure -- although at the time astronomers thought other galaxies were nebulae, not galaxies.

It was not until 1922 that American astronomer Edwin Hubble first proved that our galaxy was just one of many, many more in the universe.