The story of the Star of Bethlehem is one of the most recognizable scenes in the Christian imagination: a brilliant sign shining over the place where a child was born, guiding mysterious eastern visitors to the cradle of a newborn king. The Gospel of Matthew, the only book of the Bible to mention the event, describes a star that rose in the east, captured the attention of “magi” (likely astrologer-priests from Babylon or Persia), and moved before them until it rested over the place where Jesus lay.

The episode is only a dozen verses long, but these few lines have generated two millennia of speculation. What did the magi see? Could an astronomical event match Matthew’s description? Scholars, astronomers, and theologians have proposed a wide range of answers from comets to supernovas, to

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