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Some more background on Christ's birth and the Magi:

"The Star of Bethlehem," IMPRIMIS, Hillsdale College (Dec 1996): http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/1996/Dec96Imprimis.pdf . A six page article that summarizes important facts supporting Christ's birth date of September 11, 3 B.C. Note that this date was also the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and commonly considered to be the first day of Creation in Genesis ("birthday of the world").

"The Star that Astonished the World," Ernest Martin, Ph.D. http://askelm.com/star/star000.htm and http://askelm.com/books/book003.htm . This book is THE definitive work on what the Star of Bethlehem really was (Jupiter). It describes the numerous conjunctions and massing of planets that announced Christ's birth and pinpoints the exact day and time from astronomical, historical, and Biblical records. This evidence convinced the Magi astronomers (wise men) from Persia (Iran) to journey over 1000 miles to Bethlehem and pay honor to the 15-month old Christ child in December, 2 B.C. The Shockwave video (http://askelm.com/video/v020301.htm ) produced by MSNBC is particularly good as it demonstrates the various conjunctions and retrograde planetary motions in a very clear fashion.

September 11th news, http://www.september11news.com/Sept11History.htm . Islamic jihadists killed nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. The author of this site includes Christ's birth in his historical timeline of Sept 11 events. It is not surprising that the evil one of this world would besmirch the birth date of his eventual conqueror.

Cyrus the Great Became Top Leader Of His Era By Championing Just Rule Cyrus Charter of Human Rights I am Cyrus. King of the world. When I entered Babylon... I did not allow anyone to terrorise the land... I kept in view the needs of Babylon and all its sanctuaries to promote their well-being... I put an end to their misfortune. From The First Charter of the Rights of Nations

Cyrus, The Great, 539 B.C. Founder of The First Persian Empire

King Cyrus allows Return of Jews from Iran to Israel In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing: "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: "`The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you--may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.'" 2 Chronicles 36:22-23

<"This book is THE definitive work on what the Star of Bethlehem really was">

I'm very sure that -THE Definitive Work- has it all wrong because important parts of the biblical account have been replaced with folklore in the understanding of the author of the book you cite.

Tradition has the Magi from the east following a bright star across Asia to Jerusalem and then from Jerusalem to Bethlehem until they wind up on Mary & Joseph’s doorstep. There have been lots of attempts to identify what astronomic event or object the star of Bethlehem was.

The Gospel according to Hallmark is so prevalent that I’ve even seen atheist arguments debunking the Star of Bethlehem by stating that there is no historical record of such a noteworthy event. The notion that there was some spectacular astronomical phenomenon is entirely extra-Biblical though. For extra credit; read Matthew 2:1-18.

The sorts of explanations I’ve heard are super-nova, comets and unusual planetary conjunctions. I believe the type of behavior that the star exhibited near the end of the account precludes any type of natural phenomenon. The star, which is described as the SAME star that they saw in the east, appeared essentially fixed above the surface of the earth. It did move somewhat to lead the Magi from Jerusalem to the house in Bethlehem, a distance of about five miles. I haven’t done any experiments, but I don’t think that I could tell which house a star was leading me to if that star was much higher than a few hundred feet.

Whatever is described in the New Testament account cannot be reconciled to any natural phenomena. The tendency here would be to assume that this story is pure fabrication. Within the account, there are a few instances of hidden self consistency that tend to support the truthfulness of the account. My premise is that if a witness to an event provides incidental detail that later corroborates the main thread of the testimony then the witness is probably telling the truth. The alternative is that the witness is an extremely clever liar.

In the Nativity account, the hidden detail is not terribly subtle but it is delivered in such an offhand way that , to my knowledge, no one noticed the corroborative detail before. Key points: “...magi came from the east...” I’m relying on other people’s expertise here, but magi refers to the Chaldean caste from Persia. The Chaldeans were an ethnic group who were the civil administrators, scholars and mystics of the Babylonian empire. This same group figures prominently in the Book of Daniel. In their day, astronomy and astrology were a single discipline. It is likely that the group that went to Jerusalem included people who were that times equivalent to astronomer/scientists.

They said, "Where is He that is born king of the Jews?”

There is no clue in the account how they put the star and the birth of the king of the Jews together. My favorite explanation is that they had Daniel’s prophesies and timelines and also maybe something astrological to work with.

“...for we have seen His star in the east...”

This is identified as the same star that later hovers over a house in Bethlehem.

“...Herod the king heard these things and was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.”

Herod and the people of Jerusalem were troubled by the arrival of the magi. The Jews do not seem to have noticed anything unusual in the way of a star. If the star was unusually bright or otherwise spectacular they might of noticed it. The legal prohibition against any form of divination kept the Jews from practicing astrology so they might not have been familiar with what went where in the sky.

“Then Herod, when he had secretly called the magi , determined from them what time the star appeared.”

This is another indication that he may not have been aware of anything unusual in the sky. For some reason though, he seems to take the situation very seriously. He covertly meets with the magi to determine when they first saw the star. Apparently it took the magi a fairly long time to start their expedition to Jerusalem. Herod later uses their answer as his basis for killing the 2 year and under males in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was a small town so the number of infants killed probably wasn’t huge. No historical record would have recorded this event since Herod was a bloodthirsty tyrant who ordered up some much larger massacres tha did get reported.

“...they departed, and behold the star, which they had seen in the East, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.”

Again note that the magi considered this the same star as the one they saw back in their own country. Clearly the word translated here as star refers to any small light in the sky. The modern expression “shooting star” is an example of a less than technically accurate usage.

“When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”

There is the implication that they hadn’t seen the star for a while and suddenly spot it again. Perhaps the star was so unnoteworthy that it was hard to keep track of from night to night. The expression “exceeding great joy” is really there in the Greek and seems to heap on superlatives in order to indicate that the emotional reaction of the magi to the star was truly extraordinary. They seemed more impressed by the star than they were by Jesus. The narrative states that they fell down and did homage to Jesus as the king that they were seeking but no mention is made of their emotional state.

I spent fourteen years working with NASA TV. On occasion,I was around teams of scientists who were just at the point of discovery. New science was news and needed to be covered. A certain mania sweeps over most scientists when, finally, after all their efforts, the data starts coming in.

Over and over again it went something like this:

The HST project team all crowd around computer display and watch as an image is being built line by line. They are hoping to get images of the Shoemaker/Levy impact sites on Jupiter just as they rotate into view. When the team sees just the edge of the impact sites their eyes widen with excitement. A couple of seconds later, the scan shows some more and they can no longer contain themselves. They start jumping up and down, shouting , pounding on one another and generally going nuts. One of them opens a bottle of Perrier and douses everyone... The magi described in the Matthew account manifested similar behavior.

So did the magi exist? Or were they the clever and self consistent invention of the author of the gospel story? This same author in a fairly offhand way tells us that there was a nondescript star that the Jews never noticed. That same nondescript star was only noticed by star experts from another country. It looked normal but moved (or failed to move) strangely. The following is a fairly plausible conjecture of what may have occurred based on the Bible narrative.

One night in Persia a couple of astrologers were out looking at the sky, taking measurements and plotting the queen’s horoscope. Over on the western horizon in a familiar constellation they noticed an ordinary looking star that didn’t belong in that constellation. All of the planets were accounted for so this had to be something new. They woke up some other colleagues to help figure out what was going on. They noticed that as the original constellation went below the horizon, the new star remained motionless. The next night even more people were out looking at this one star in the sky that never moved. Scholars from every province were talking about it. Perhaps they compared observations from different locations:

Arglebargel wrote, “On the night of the Queen’s Birthday festival Rigel passed right over the star.”

Shnozwanger wrote back, “But on that night, I saw Orinis pass over the star..."

Another scholar , a cartographer, was familiar with Pythagorus and the Wisdom of the Triangle.
This man figured out that this point light source that everyone called a star, was close enough to travel to. His best guess put it about 250 miles high over Jerusalem.

It took a few months to arrange for the expedition, but finally they started out. As they traveled, they tried to keep track of the star. Sometimes the clear desert sky was so full of stars that it was difficult to find the one star that didn’t move with the rest. The mapmaker said that if he was right, the star would seem higher each night as they approached Jerusalem. After several cloudy nights they lost track of the star, and couldn’t locate it. But they traveled on to Jerusalem anyway.

When they arrived, they searched Jerusalem for learned men who could help them find the Messiah that Daniel the prophet spoke of. In the evening Herod had the magi brought to him. Herod asked them some questions and after consulting his own learned men, suggested that the one the magi were seeking might be in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem was a little town five miles to the south of Jerusalem so the magi left right away after leaving Herod. Once outside the south gate they look up at the starry sky and directly overhead where the mapmaker told them to look, they saw the star right in the middle of some constellation where it didn’t belong.

As they walked south they noticed that the star seemed to be traveling south also. The magi were elated. All there lives they studied the stars and looked for signs and now there was a sign that was obviously provided just for them. (Possibly the star was positioned over Bethlehem the entire time but began a descent and brightness change just as the magi started toward Bethlehem.
If the star was higher than a few hundred feet at the end of the magi's journey they could not have identified which house to visit. The descent of the star to the few hundred foot altitude would create an apparent forward motion toward Bethlehem to anyone on the ground.

Admitedly, this is all conjecture but some form of subtle miracle is what has to be described in the Bible. How long did the star move and lead them to the house where Jesus was? A few hours at the longest since it was only a five mile walk from Herod to Bethlehem. The planetary retrograde motion scenario would take many weeks to unfold. But every night during that time, Jupiter would whiz by and never come to rest over anything or anywhere like the book suggests. The author is forcing his data to fit by obscuring this crucial fact.

No, it CANNOT be Jupiter!!

(Mat 2:9 KJV) When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

Note that it CLEARLY STOOD STILL over Jesus, not the area, but the very location, else, how in the world can a conjunction of planets point to a house?

This was NOT a natural event done in providence, it was a miracle itself.