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In September of 3 BC at the time of the Jewish New Year, Rosh ha-Shanah, Jupiter began to do just that.
A magus watching Jupiter that September saw two objects moving so close that they appeared to touch.
Our Middle Eastern viewer saw Jupiter coming into a close conjunction with the star, Regulus.
Jupiter glides slowly past Regulus about every 12 years.
Jupiter's orbit wobbles relative to Regulus, so not every conjunction is as close as the one he saw in 3 BC.
But then it entered retrograde. It "changed its mind" and headed back to Regulus for a second conjunction.
After this second pass it reversed course again for yet a third rendezvous with Regulus, a triple conjunction.
These symbols could indicate a birth, but if they were interpreted to indicate the time of conception, the beginning of a human life, might there be something interesting in the sky nine months later?
Indeed. In June of 2 BC, Jupiter continued the pageantry.
By the following June, Jupiter had finished crowning Regulus. The Planet of Kings traveled on through the star field toward another spectacular rendezvous, this time with Venus, the Mother Planet. This conjunction was so close and so bright that it is today displayed in hundreds of planetaria around the world by scientists who may know nothing of Messiah.
Jupiter appeared to join Venus. The planets could not be distinguished with the naked eye.
If our magus had had a telescope, he could have seen that the planets sat one atop the other, like a figure eight.
Each contributed its full brightness to what became the most brilliant star our man had ever seen. Jupiter completed this step of the starry dance as it was setting in the west. That evening, our Babylonian magus would have seen the spectacle of his career while facing toward Judea.
No one alive had ever seen such a conjunction.
On December 25 of 2 BC as it entered retrograde, Jupiter reached full stop in its travel through the fixed stars.
Magi viewing from Jerusalem would have seen it stopped in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem.