It's long been a puzzle for Christian astronomers, and now a professor from the University of Notre Dame thinks he has it figured out - almost, anyway. His quest: discovering just what "the star in the East" was that led wise men to travel to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. As a theoretical astrophysicist, Grant Mathews had hoped the answer would be spectacular - something like a supernova. But two years of research have led him to a more ordinary conclusion. The heavenly sign around the time of the birth of Jesus Christ was probably an unusual alignment of planets, the sun and the moon. Not a lot was written about the star in the Bible. In the Gospel of Matthew it says: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him." The star, though, has long been immortalised in Christmas songs, plays and movies. Astronomers, theologians and historians for hundreds of years have been trying to determine exactly which star might have inspired the biblical writing. German astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed in 1604 that the star was a conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC. The advantage Mathews has over Kepler and others who have pondered the question is that he had access to the databases of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "In principle, we can see any star that was ever made from the beginning of time if we knew where to look. So the question is, could we find a star that could be a good candidate for what showed up then?" he said.
Mathews found several possibilities. He began by posing three questions he would ask when trying to find the answer to any astronomical event: When did it occur? What were its characteristics? Did anyone else see it? The Gospel of Matthew indicates Jesus was born in Bethlehem when Herod was king. Roman historian Flavius Josephus wrote that Herod died after an eclipse of the moon before the Passover. Mathews said among the possibilities are 6 BC, 5 BC, 1 BC. or AD 1.
