Download Star Of Wonder

MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
[email protected]
Star Of Wonder
The Book of Matthew says that "the star they had seen in the east went ahead
of them until it stopped over the place where the child was." What did the three
Magi actually see that night? Was it a naturally-occurring event? A
miracle? Fiction?
I see no reason to doubt that the Magi saw something real in the sky; I will
leave it to you to decide whether such a natural event was also in some sense a
miracle. The "Magi" were not kings, but rather priests who practiced
astrology. Although astrology is known today to be fictitious, ancient astrologers
were knowledgeable observers of the night sky.
The Magi are said to have visited King Herod shortly before he died, and he
is thought to have died during 4 to 1 BC. Many historians regard this as the most
likely time frame for Jesus' birth. The day of the year is unknown. December 25
was chosen by the early Christians because this was the date of the lavish Roman
Saturnalia festival, when the Christian celebration could avoid attention and thus
escape persecution. The Saturnalia can in turn be traced to the winter solstice, the
time of the shortest and darkest days, a time when a festival of lights was needed to
cheer the soul.
Did the Magi see a meteor, the "falling star" seen when a particle from space
burns up in Earth's atmosphere? This is unlikely, as meteors appear several times
every night, they burn for only a second, and Matthew says the star stopped over
Bethlehem.
Was it a comet, an icy object that orbits our sun in long elliptical paths? A
typical comet has a long dusty tail that can be spectacularly lit by sunlight and is
visible for weeks as it works its way around the sun. But the Chinese, who were
careful observers of such phenomena, didn't record any comets during 4 to 1
BC. They saw Halley's comet in 11 BC, outside of the expected time frame, and
recorded an object in 5 BC that could have been a comet. However, comets were
usually seen as prophesies of disasters, not of the births of kings.
The great 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler hypothesized it to be a
"nova," a sudden brightening of a star that lasts for a few weeks and then
subsides. It occurs when a tiny but massive "white dwarf" star pulls hydrogen gas
off of a second neighboring star, the hydrogen is heated to enormous temperatures
by the white dwarf, and the hydrogen "fuses" like a giant hydrogen bomb (H-
bomb) to release much heat and light. The object recorded in 5 BC by the Chinese
could have been a nova rather than a comet, and this could in fact have been the
Star of Bethlehem.
Because it's so stupendous, my favorite hypothesis has always been a
supernova, the dramatic brightening of a star caused by an explosion of the entire
star. Supernovas occur when a giant star, much more massive than our sun, runs
out of nuclear fuel and, in just one second, "collapses" inward to become a far
smaller object, ripping the entire star apart and throwing much of its material out
into space. The remaining portion of the star then collapses still further to become
either a "neutron star" just a few kilometers across, or a "black hole" that is far
smaller than even the tiny nucleus of an atom and yet contains the entire mass of
the star. Earth, including your body, is formed partly from the dust blown into
space from such explosions. But unfortunately for my favorite hypothesis, no
supernova explosions were recorded during the expected time frame.
Or it could have been a planetary conjunction, when two planets cross paths
as seen from Earth, making the planets appear close together. By using Newton's
theories of gravity and motion, we can calculate just when such conjunctions
occurred in the past.
Several occurred around the time of Jesus' birth. In 7 BC, Jupiter passed
Saturn on May 29, then went into "retrograde motion" (this refers to an apparent
temporary change in the direction of motion of a planet relative to the stars, as seen
from Earth) and passed Saturn a second time on September 30, and then again
changed its apparent direction of motion and passed Saturn yet a third time on
December 5. The two planets were only one degree apart in all three
conjunctions. For comparison, a fist held on an outstretched arm covers about 10
degrees of sky.
In 6 BC, Jupiter and Saturn remained within three degrees of each other
during eight consecutive months from May until January--about the time that it
might have taken the Magi to travel the 500 miles from Babylonia to Bethlehem.
Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets as seen from Earth, had a very
close conjunction from 3:45 to 5:20 AM on August 12, 3 BC. When they first
emerged above the eastern horizon, the two planets were separated by only onefifth of one degree and would have been quite striking.
In 2 BC, on June 17 at 8:30 pm Bethlehem time, Venus and Jupiter drew to
within one-hundreth of one degree (0.01 degrees) of each other, and would have
appeared to hover at some 15 degrees above the western horizon. To the Magi, the
two brightest planets could have appeared to coalesce into one and glowed before
them like a dazzling beacon. Was this the star of wonder?
Merry Christmas.