more research on the Star of Bethlehem

From Nancy DeMoss Smith in the WSJ, a heads-up (hat tip: Linda Christiansen) about a show on the Science channel this week: "Search for the Star of Bethlehem" (Sunday, 9-10 p.m. EST)....

I've read articles on this over the years, but it's not a field of expertise or, frankly, a ton of interest. In any case, you might get a kick out of this!

As Christmas-time viewing, "Search for the Star" is more uplifting than any movie or other standard holiday fare. Yet it is equally fascinating as a detective story. Quite apart from the religious angle, we have 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablets, 2,000-year-old coins, an ancient book from China, and spanking-new information gathered in outer space by radio telescope....

What they would have seen in the sky at the time of Jesus' birth (in reality, probably a few years earlier than A.D. 1, according to an interesting sidebar here) is the subject of dispute. Is there evidence of a comet at that time, or is a more likely candidate for a notable event a supernova known as DO Aquilla? The most compelling sight in the nighttime sky at the time of Jesus may have been the result of a known alignment of Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter figures in several modern astronomical theories. The ancients called Jupiter the "kingmaker planet" or "royal star."...