Star of Bethlehem returns to the skies

According to the Gospel of Matthew, wise men from the East were inspired to travel to Jerusalem by a bright star that appeared in the night sky. There, they asked King Herod: “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

For the first time in 800 years, the Christmas star has appeared in the heavens once again – just in time to mark the birth of Jesus. Thanks to a couple of millennia of scientific discovery, however, experts now believe the Three Wise Men did not see a star, but rather a rare phenomenon caused by the coming together of two planets.

It’s an event known as a “Great Conjunction,” in which the two planetary giants of our solar system travel together across the sky. Though they pass each other regularly and align in the sky once every two decades, it has been nearly 400 years since Jupiter and Saturn came this close – and almost 800 years since that alignment occurred at night.

Over the course of several days while the planets approached one another, the spectacle was visible with the naked eye around an hour after sunset. The closest alignment took place during the Winter Solstice on Monday, when the planets were just a tenth of a degree apart.

In reality, of course, the gas giants remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space. But on the winter solstice, looking out from Earth, the two came together to light up the skies in a twinkling reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.