Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Friday, December 3rd.  The sun will rise at 8:01.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 1 minute, setting at 5:03.   The moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 7:00 tomorrow morning.

The Search for the Star of Bethlehem, will be presented at this evening’s meeting of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory starting at 8 p.m.  This is my generally biennial presentation.  We’ll check out the Biblical passages that mention the star,  Johannes Kepler’s discovery that started the search some 1600 years later, ancient Chinese records, ancient writers all contribute to the evidence.  Thanks to Kepler, Newton, Einstein and others plus the power of today’s computers and software we can go back and see the skies, and computer generated recreations of planet positions to see what the star might have been.  The observatory’s located south of Traverse City on Birmley Road.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.