Scientific explanations for the famous Christmas star described in biblical accounts of the birth of Christ are the focus of a program showing now at the Hardin Planetarium at Western Kentucky University. As he has each year since 1978, Western astronomy professor Roger Scott leads the program, which explores various celestial phenomena, including comets, supernovas and celestial conjunctions that could account for the Star of Bethlehem. “I don’t claim that I can tell you exactly what the Christmas Star was,” Scott said. “But I can offer some interesting ideas about what scientists think might have accounted for it.” A bright comet passing near the Earth at the time of the nativity is one explanation long offered for the star, he said. A comet’s relatively long period of visibility from various points on the Earth is one mark in its favor, Scott said. “We now believe that the wise men were in fact Zoroastrian priests who were living in Persia, what we now call Iraq,” he said. “So to reach Bethlehem, they would have had to travel as much as 1,000 to 1,200 miles, and that could have taken them as long as two years, so whatever the star was, it had to be visible for a long period of time.”

While a comet certainly could have remained visible for a long enough period to lead the Magi through their journey, superstitions about comets as harbingers of doom were prevalent in the era, casting some doubt on the theory. “I don’t believe you can prove that it was a comet, but I don’t believe that you can disprove it, either,” Scott said. “It is just one of a few theories that seem plausible.” Another strange fact about the Christmas Star that makes pinning down its celestial origins difficult is the fact that the Bible doesn’t mention anyone other than the wise men who saw the star, he said. “It seems unlikely that if there was something like a comet up there that no one else would have noticed,” he said. “So it could be that there was some kind of celestial conjunction that would have been noticeable to the priests, who practiced astrology, but not to other people.”

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