Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Monday, December 17th.  The sun will rise at 8:14.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 5:03.   The moon, 3 days before first quarter, will set at 10:36 this evening.

The Star of Bethlehem is one of the great mysteries of Christmas.  The Chinese of that time were the only ones that recorded the happenings in the heavens.  There were no bright stars that appeared near the time of Christ’s birth.  That leads us to the Magi themselves, if that’s who they were.  Magi were astrologer priests of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia.  They saw signs in the positions of the planets that would go unnoticed to the Jews to which astrology was forbidden.  Conjunctions where two or more planets gathered together were the most powerful of these configurations.  There was a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in seven BC that’s the most famous, but I have another set of conjunctions in mind to tell you about tomorrow.

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