Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, December 19th.  The sun will rise at 8:15.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 5:04.   The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 7:34 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,  and two extremely close conjunctions between Jupiter and Venus in 3 and 2 BC.  Could one of those be it?

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

Addendum

The Jupiter-Saturn triple conjunction of 7 BC. Click on the image to enlarge and animate. Created using Cartes du Ciel.

Animation of the Jupiter-Venus conjunction of August 3, 3 BC. in the morning twilight. Created using Stellarium.

Click on the image to enlarge and show the animation. Jupiter is rising while Venus, the brighter one, is heading back to the sun. Jupiter will seem to mate with Venus. 9 months later, the human gestation period their paths seem to cross again.

June of 2 BC just after sunset Jupiter and Venus again cross paths. Created using Stellarium.

Click on the image to enlarge and show the animation.