Was a Great Conjunction the Christmas Star?

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Could the Christmas Star described in Matthew 2 have been a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn? Those two planets align about every twenty years, but once or twice a millennium they align so closely that they appear as one incredibly bright temporary object that’s highly visible to the unaided human eye. This happened in December 2020, March of 1226, and in May of 7 BC. In this video we’ll look at the historical and astronomical evidence as we think through four different possibilities for what the Christmas Star might have been.

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SOURCES WITH NOTES:

EXCELLENT data and analysis from atheist Henk-Reints (start here for your own deep-dive)
http://www.henk-reints.nl/easter/crux.htm

NASA’s simple introductory article regarding the great conjunction
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/the-great-conjunction-of-jupiter-and-saturn

Astronomical Computations website by Henk Reints
http://www.henk-reints.nl/astro/index.htm

Last visible great conjunction was March 4, 1226
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-closest-alignment-years-jupiter-saturn.html

Appearance of planetary movement from Earth (including retrogrades)
https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/universe/what-is-retrograde-motion.html

Jupiter in retrograde
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-exactly-was-christmas-star-180957637/

Broom Star 5 BC
http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/christmasstar.asp

Greek word for star – “astera”
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29ste%2Fra&la=greek&can=a%29ste%2Fra0&prior=d%27&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0133:book=4&i=1
https://biblehub.com/greek/792.htm

Astera in Homer’s Illiad Book 4
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134:book=4:card=50

One theory about the 7BC great conjunctions
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~vdkruit/jea3/homepage/beth.pdf

Recent data on total number of known comets in the solar system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet#:~:text=As%20of%20July%202019%20there,estimated%20to%20be%20one%20trillion.

Ancient comet orbits
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979PASJ…31..257H
https://sci.esa.int/web/rosetta/-/54198-harbingers-of-doom-windy-exhalations-or-icy-wanderers
 
List of supernovae from the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/lists/Supernovae.html

Novae are relatively small explosions in double star systems. They come about when a white dwarf’s intense gravity tugs material away from a companion star. Gas piles up around the white dwarf and eventually becomes dense enough to ignite in a burst of nuclear fusion.
Most supernovas, meanwhile, mark the deaths of massive stars and the formation of neutron stars. They are triggered when a shockwave tears through the outer layers of a dying star, igniting a firestorm of nuclear fusion.
https://www.howitworksdaily.com/whats-the-difference-between-a-nova-supernova-and-hypernova/

As a result of their long orbits, Jupiter and Saturn meet in the sky only once every 20 years. In this period of time, Saturn completes two-thirds of its 30-year orbit (since 20 is two-thirds of 30). In the same period, Jupiter completes one 12-year orbit, plus, in the remaining 8 years, two-thirds of its next orbit (since 8 is two-thirds of 12). In other words, 20 years is the time it takes Jupiter to catch up and pass Saturn again as they circle the Sun.
The above figures are round numbers. More precise figures are 11.86 years for Jupiter’s orbital period, 29.46 years for Saturn’s orbital period, and 19.86 years for the average frequency of a great conjunction
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/saturnfact.html
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/jupiterfact.html

Charles Pritchard’s Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 25 , Pg. 119 Charts his detailing of the Triple Great Conjunctions of 7BC
1857MmRAS..25..119P (harvard.edu)

Introduction to the controversy surrounding Herod’s year of death
https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/XIX/1/204/1639567?redirectedFrom=PDF

Regarding Johannes Kepler and his ideas about the Christmas star
https://www.nature.com/articles/462987a


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