Science: Star of Bethlehem
Astronomers have suggested that the Star of Bethlehem which guided the wise men to the Child Jesus was a nova or "new star," exploding like famed Nova Herculis of 1934. Last week Professor William Henry Barton Jr. of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, operating the Zeiss projector in the new Hayden Planetarium, ran celestial time backward and showed how the Star might have been a planetary conjunction. In 8 B.C. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were very close together, as the projector showed on the vault of the Planetarium dome. When the projector was run slowly forward, the three planets merged, shone brilliantly as one.
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