BBC The Sky at Night - The Real Star of Bethlehem: A Christmas Special [HD]

[Music] Christmas means different things to different people to some of us it's about tradition fathers is family and presence and for some is about the religious message that underpins it women but this is an astronomy show and there's one piece of the Christmas story that's particularly relevant to us the Star of Bethlehem so tonight we're going in search of the Christmas star [Music] we'll be looking for the real astronomical phenomena that could have caused a new star to appear 2,000 years ago the candidates are some of the most exciting objects in the night sky welcome to a sky at night Christmas special [Music] astronomers have been speculating about the cause of the Star of Bethlehem for centuries and they've been all sorts of suggestions as to what it might have been and they're varied from the plausible to the ridiculous could it really have been a UFO what probably not but tonight we've whittled the list down to the six most plausible candidates and over the course of the program with the help of our experts we'll be presenting the case for each of these possibilities in order to choose the most likely explanation will be reconstructing the skies over Jerusalem 2,000 years ago this coming together of these two planets I interpret as the star of less fear and examining the case for all the prime candidates and above the stable poised majestically in the sky is a beautiful comet Dallas Campbell will be sifting through the archaeological and the historical evidence for events that took place in the skies of the Middle East two millennia ago this is real historical evidence to say at that time there was an astronomical event that was important that people wrote down would have looked spectacular and finally mainly and I will assess the evidence make our choice as to what the Star of Bethlehem might have been but first Chris introduces perhaps the most dramatic of our six candidates the typical Christmas card image of the Star of Bethlehem is of a bright new star that suddenly blazes to life in the sky that's an event we know can happen in nature because in 1604 that exact phenomenon was observed by Johannes Kepler one of the greatest astronomers of them all his record of the event can still be found in the library of the Royal Astronomical Society this wonderful book contains Kepler's writings on the subject it was printed in 1606 it's one of only 35 copies left in the world so I'm gonna be very careful with it and try and turn to the title page and we can see that the title is stellar nova impetus serpent ari that's the new star in the foot of the serpent bearer of the constellation we call off the yuccas and in fact to confirm that we don't need the title we can turn on to Kepler's own star map here it is you can see the familiar constellations and there's offer yuccas with his serpent wrapped around him and the new star is down here in his foot marked n for new and Kepler described this star was like a torch blown by a strong wind he said it was the most beautiful and glorious star ever seen so is clearly impressed with his discovery both from a sort of scientific point of view but also remember he was a devout Christian he believed in astrology and so a new star must mark something significant happening on earth or or in the heavens if we flick on we could see him writing to an advisor to the court of rudolf ii to him the books dedicated and he says the star that led the Magi the wise men to christ manger might have had some relation to our star in other words he thinks he's just seen the modern equivalent of the Star of Bethlehem what Kepler didn't know was what had caused the new star to appear today we know it was not caused by a star's birth but by its violent death a supernova this is how the most common type of supernova works a star is always in danger of collapsing in on itself due to his own gravity the only thing that stops this is the energy produced by fusion taking place in its core this provides an outward pressure which keeps the star stable when it runs out of fuel it can no longer resist its own gravity and it collapses and rebounds in a massive explosion it releases as much energy in that single instant as our Sun will release in its entire lifetime it suddenly becomes brighter than tens of billions of ordinary stars this picture shows a supernova almost outshining an entire galaxy and poetically the Express of death of these stars are ultimately responsible for the creation of life as they spread the elements essential for life throughout the universe supernovae aren't rare in fact it's thought that throughout the universe ten occur every second but most of these are too distant to notice and they can only be picked up by the most powerful telescopes but sometimes every few hundred years a supernova occurs within our own galaxy [Music] we know from Kepler's accounts that our nearby supernova is one of the most impressive sights in the sky but he'd not seen anything like it since 1604 or we can find today are the traces that supernovae leave behind this is the remnant left by Kepler's supernova and this is the Crab Nebula a cloud of gas and dust created by another supernova explosion that appeared in the skies 500 years earlier when the light from this explosion reached earth in 1054 it was as if a new star suddenly appeared in the night sky it praised as bright as the moon for two years before fading but it made a real impression on the people of the time and a new star was recorded by the Chinese the Japanese and also in the Middle East these walk paintings in the American Southwest are thought to show the position whether supernovae appeared in the sky just like Kepler supernova the 1054 event had made a huge impact that's why I think that a supernova is a great candidate to be the Star of Bethlehem if a supernova had occurred 2,000 years ago it's easy to see why people would have taken it as an omen of great events happening here on earth [Music] [Applause] a bright supernova appearing suddenly does seem to fit all the facts that's why it's been such a popular explanation for more than 400 years but to really find out what the Star of Bethlehem was or whether it existed at all we need to find an accurate description in the historical record and so we've sent Dallas Campbell to see what he can dig up the first place to start searching for a record of the star is of course in the Bible even there it's only mentioned in one place in the Gospel of st. Matthew now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying where is he that is born King of the Jews for we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship Him then Herod privily called the wise men and learned of them exactly what time the star appeared and they having heard the king went their way and lo the star which they saw in the East went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was and when they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and that is it we just have those few paragraphs the wise men may see the star which brings them to Jerusalem we don't know who they are we don't know how far they've come they then see the star again which leads them to nearby Bethlehem as a piece of writing it's poetic but as a historical document it doesn't give us a lot to go on the Gospel according to Matthew was written at least 70 years after the events it described so if I want a more reliable historical document I'm going to have to look elsewhere the problem is where and when to look because of course we're not entirely sure when all this happened one thing we are sure of is that the Star of Bethlehem didn't appear on the 25th of December 0 ad I've come to see the Reverend Robin Griffith Jones to see if he can tell me where in the historical records I should be looking let me ask you about the birth of Jesus why do we think Jesus was not born on the 25th of December 2015 years ago I mean this is the kind of date we have but with it's arbitrary it's a slightly Abba trip but we can do two two stages first of all we do that the time of year time okay so why do we think he was born on the 25th of December the Romans the pagan Romans celebrated the end of December with huge festivities the Saturnalia that God Mithras the winter solstice everything gathered around this dark cold time of year as they look forward to the future and the next year and so it's easy you see what happened the Christians simply took over and Christianize this and we're happy with that can we be more specific about a year just in terms of what we're looking for here can we sort of narrow it down I mean obviously the calendar itself that we're working with us is pretty to post dates that and of course it does yes we've plumped for the present dating which makes this year 2015 based upon the calculations of an extraordinary monk called dionysius exiguus he did an extremely complicated calculation of the dates of Easter for the ninety-five years leading on from his own time in AD five to five and while he was about this he realized it was an opportunity to recalibrate the entire dating system of the world of the then Christian world it had previously been based on the years of the Emperor Diocletian a persecutor of the Christians and AD had meant a no to you Clarion II year of dark leash and Dionysus would have none of it he was going to start with the year of domine the Lord and so he had to calculate the year of the birth of Jesus and he reckons that Jesus was born seven hundred and fifty three years after the foundation of the city of Rome bingo but he didn't get it right he we know actually what couple of mistakes he made which meant that he ended up about four years old this is good news because we know that Jesus was born while Herod the Great was still alive Herod the Great died in 4 BC almost certainly we know when he died because we're told he died after a lunar eclipse shortly before Passover and we know there was a lunar eclipse in 4 BC one month before Passover think and that's reliable and we it's interesting that way we're looking at astronomical events details can I ask you about this this star you're not bothered it had to be on the day of his birth no ok well that's it might have been yeah before Jesus was born two years before Jesus was born say if I'm going to continue my search to look for some kind of astronomical tent if Herod died in 4 BC yes where does that leave us well I think we're likely to look the two or three years before so let's make seven to four the main if the main inquiry ok thank you very much you've given me some more clean ok well hopefully that gives us a little bit of a clearer idea in terms of an actual date our next task is to find out what was going on in the night sky at that time that is if the star existed at all I kind of think there was something that took place in the the Near East around the time that Jesus was born that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew was drawing on and building up in terms of a meaning story but he wasn't creating it out of nothing the idea that the heavens would indicate something big was going to happen was seen as perfectly normal you've got two very bad of course at that time many many things could not be predicted life death famine harvest failure things of that sort and it was very easy after after the event that you might say oh yes just before the flood came just before the harvest failed there was a comet there was a conjunction there was something like that so people were always looking heavenwards to try to understand not just how the world works but why it worked in the way that it did history suggests that we should be looking for an event that happened in the sky between 7 and 4 BC but what sort of astronomical event would have attracted the attention of the wise man or the major as they were known some of the possibilities like supernovae would have been very dramatic but Chris has been investigating a more subtle possibility not all the candidates to be the Star of Bethlehem are stars some believe that the thing that set the Magi on their journey was an alignment of planets and so I've come here to the Royal Observatory Greenwich with its Peter Harrison planetarium to simulate the night sky at the time of Jesus's birth [Music] [Applause] astronomer David Hughes has been studying the Star of Bethlehem for over 30 years and he thinks he's located it in an event that occurred in the skies above the Middle East in 7 BC well David we've got the night sky as seen from Jerusalem a little more than 2000 years ago and it looks pretty familiar to me well it is familiar the constellation shapes have hardly changed and of course we have these two wonderful planets Jupiter and Saturn and they're close together and of course astrologically the fact that they are close together means that you've got a conjunction they came together in the year 7 BC and this coming together of these two planets I interpret as the Star of Bethlehem well we can watch that using the planetarium so this is the 27th of March 7 BC if we run time forward you can tell us what happens well what we're seeing here is they're coming together they don't merge they come together they get pretty close they get pretty close but this is not just one conjunction over the course of several months the two planets came together three times a so-called triple conjunction so these two planets were seen close together first in the dawn sky what is known in Matthew is in the east and of course then as the months passed you got them appearing close together in the evening skies and I think personally the major I thought that this indicated the actual birth date of this new king of the Jews okay so when was that date that date was Tuesday the 23rd of September okay so Christmas was three months ago so that's good we've got that out of the way this interpretation of the Star of Bethlehem requires that the Magi had a detailed understanding of the movement of the planets in the sky they must have been skilled astronomers but it also requires that they gave very specific astrological meaning to this interaction between Jupiter and Saturn but conjunctions happen reasonably often triple conjunctions less so but why do you think this was the Star of Bethlehem firstly as you say conjunctions do happen all the time triple conjunctions don't you've got to get in essence some earth and the two objects lined up for a triple conjunction so that's rarer and then the next thing is you've got to introduce actually where in the sky this is happening and that is in the constellation of Pisces there you see PI season this is rare yes it takes place round about every eight hundred nine hundred years and so the major I read said ah that means this new ruler is in Israel how did you go from Pisces to Israel well I don't but the astrologers two thousand years ago actually divided the Zodiac up as we do now into twelve different constellations and each of these constellations was associated with one of their neighboring country okay so there's a list so in Ptolemaic astrology there isn't this okay pisces Israel Aries Syria and so on the Magi of course would have been spending their lives looking at the planets they knew what was going to happen a new king they knew where it was going to happen pisces indicating the vicinity of jerusalem and of course they knew when it was going to happen it strikes me this is the opposite of the primary school version of the story where we have the big shiny star that hovers in front of the wise men and settles over the stable this is a scientific story you're telling you know calculations observations that test them and then a conclusion there's no big shiny star but if you read Matthew carefully there's nothing indicating that the star was out of the ordinary and it is of course important that you have a star that Herod hadn't noticed he hadn't noticed when it had started he wanted to know exactly when Jesus was born so you you want something which is a bit subtle and this seven BC triple conjunction does fit in with the general history of the times well whatever the truth of it is I really liked the idea that there were these people back then looking up and enjoying the sky just as we do today David thank you very much pleasure so that's two candidates down the bright new star the supernova that surely everyone would have noticed and the much subtler planetary conjunction which could explain why it was only seen by the wise men but who were the major and where did they come from some scholars think the major Mesopotamian Mesopotamia in particular Babylon had a great reputation for astronomy and astrology so there was a sense in which if men were going to come from the east they were likely to be from Mesopotamia what would today we Iraq a part of the world of course in those days with a very rich culture Babylon deliver sipper and so they would have been men who had been taught how to read the heavens so if the mage I were from Mesopotamia what more can we find out about them that culture is long gone and the ancient cities of Babylon have been abandoned for thousands of years but we do have some clues they were definitely skilled Babylonian astronomers who left behind crucial historical records which may shed light on the triple conjunction theory today they can be found here in the British Museum under the watchful gaze of Christopher Walker Christopher can you just tell us what these wonderful objects are what you see now our tab is that actually we have baked for their sake of their conservation but in antiquity they would have had wet clay they would have flattened it out to make an oblong shape like that and then they'd have taken their stylus the fact that they're baked that was us who did this I didn't realize that that's amazing and let me ask you about the people who would have written on these tablets I mean who were they and how accurate would they have been and why were they why were they making these records these were written by professional Babylonian scribes who were hired by the temple basically for life to sit there making astronomical observations watching everything that happened in the sky day and night and then do the mathematical calculations month by month year by year to predict various astronomical events in the sky and tell you - what kind of things on earth it might relate whether it's relating to the king or the crops or the like so they're also written in Babylonian Kenny me here which which of these symbols are actually representing the the planets and where they are where they would be in that's in this line here it says the Jupiter yeah and Saturn were in Pisces gosh so this is that this is this idea of conjunction this is exactly the idea of conjunction this is actually the single line that expresses that best and it will then go on to tell you a little bit about the moon and the Sun and the points at which the moon changes its position or there have an eclipse or the like okay what year would this one be from these three tablets all date to the 7 to 6 BC which is exactly the time we're looking for exactly so that said right there that's it that is the the the famed triple conjunction which could be maybe our candidate yes so this is real historical evidence to say at that time there was an astronomical event that was important that people wrote down would have perhaps looked spectacular it shows us that there were a group of astronomers working at Babylon who would have been able to predict the event and understand its significance whatever that may have been to them I mean what do you think do you think that could be a contender it's at least a possible contender it's the only one at least of which we have a written record or the problem is both that it's not quite as spectacular as conjunction as you might hope and secondly we have hardly any idea at all what they would have made of a conjunction yeah absolutely none of our astrological texts mentioned the West in anything other than the very Vegas terms the same to some extent would apply to the major we have no idea that seeing at this kind of planetary conjunction would have sent them running off to see King Herod in Jerusalem there seems to be more more questions than than answers really I'm going to continue on my journey I'm going to continue and look at the other options but this is fascinating it's really interesting to actually see something physical as well something concrete as it were written down thank you okay so we've got good reliable historical evidence that there was this planetary conjunction and people were seeing it observing it and writing it down whether or not they then attributed any significance to it is another story so I'm gonna keep on searching to see what else is out there but while we may be able to find archaeological evidence of the star is there any chance we can find a trace of it in the sky today Pete Lawrence has been out stargazing looking for examples of our two candidates so far but he also has some new possibilities to suggest our first candidate our planetary conjunctions now these aren't that uncommon so we can still say the same sort of events today that ancient astronomers would have seen up there at the moment we've got brilliant Jupiter and Venus shining away spectacularly just above the clouds there now at the moment they look quite well separated but just a few weeks ago they were really close together and that was enough of a draw to get people to get up early in the morning and take some spectacular photographs of them the conjunction was especially striking when Venus and Jupiter were also joined in the morning sky by Mars you can see why something similar would have appealed to ancient astronomers in 7 BC but it's not just planetary conjunctions that we can see today we can also find evidence of some of the other candidates thought to be the Star of Bethlehem unless we're unbelievably lucky over the next few hours we're probably not going to see a naked ice supernova this evening but there are plenty of stars which have the possibility of going supernova relatively soon and one such candidate is betel Gers a star in the famous constellation of Orion the Hunter if you look at the constellation of Orion Bethel cos is at its left hand shoulder and it is a distinct red color that's because as it reaches the end of its life it has swollen up to become a red giant Becca's is now over a billion miles across if you put it at the heart of our solar system it would engulf the inner planets and extend out almost as far as Saturn sometimes soon and that can mean anywhere in the next few million years it'll go off as a supernova and because it's relatively close to us at 646 light years distance it's going to put on one hello a show in the night sky better Gers is 10 times closer than the star that gave rise to the Crab Nebula or around 30 times closer than the supernova that Kepler saw so when it does go it will be much brighter even brighter than the moon and probably visible in broad daylight perhaps the Star of Bethlehem was something like this if you didn't know what caused it I can see how that would easily be mistaken for some sort of divine message but there are other suggestions of what the star might have been that we can see today some have suggested it might have been an Aurora seen much further south than usual rare but not unknown or it could have been there's a dial light a faint glowing pillar that appears above the horizon caused by light scattering through dust that fills the plane of the solar system there's one other suggestion which I want to tell you about one which I think is particularly persuasive the actual words of the original Greek of the Gospel of Matthew were Entei Anatole and that literally translates as rising in the East but is thought that Entei Anatole actually had a very special meaning for ancient astronomers it refers to the day of the year when a star reappears into view from behind the Sun as the Sun moves against the constellations it hides the Stars behind it of course but on that day that star will be briefly visible just before the Sun rises and that's known as the Stars hih like all rising [Music] [Applause] [Music] it might seem an obscure phenomenon today but helical risings were crucial events to many societies the aged Egyptians used the helical rising of Sirius to mark the beginning of the flood cycle of the Nile and the Mary's New Zealand still use the Halal rising of the Pleiades star cluster to mark the beginning of their year it's been suggested that the Star of Bethlehem that the wise men saw rising in the East was the helical rising of a star called saddle Malik which we know is alpha aquarii I now from the Arabic name that translates as the lucky star of the King and that was seen as an omen for the birth of a new king now obviously that's an occasion that would happen every year so it would need to be coupled with other omens and signs to mark this specific event but I think given the importance of helical risings to ancient cultures and also the name saddle Milic which means the lucky star of the King that puts forward a very persuasive case for this being the cause of the Star of Bethlehem [Music] another factor to take you to account in the Star of Bethlehem story is the political situation in Judea at the time occupied by the Romans and with an unpopular King people were desperate for change so there was a hunger for an omen that might suggest a messiah was on the way [Music] it was a mixture of politics and religion that has been memorably depicted in film I love the life of Bryan it's got a lot of resonances to the kind of chaotic situation of Judea in the first century and also just at the time when Jesus was born no it doesn't the time of Jesus was a time of relative civil and social unrest Romans were occupying most of the known world but there was a lot of discomfort dissatisfaction economic hardship they've been several famines so all in all things were not great for people so people used to look to other sorts of groups for some kind of liberation or some kind of hope one of the things I like about the life of Ryan is that you do get this idea of all these would-be messiahs there's a line where a John Cleese character says and this is because the Pythons had really read Josephus and the the historians of the time they've done their homework so they knew that there was a lot of expectation and there would be messiahs and prophets all over the place because the end of the rule of Herod the Great was this time of great expectation and excitement and also just absolute desperation in terms of what the Romans were not doing for Judeans [Music] later on you had this rather curious incident where Brian gets taken off by aliens and a spaceship and as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the star at that point I think that the star itself might have been an alien spaceship rather than anything astronomical so I just think that's really fun that brings us to our next candidate to be the Star of Bethlehem and it's one that had a reluctant champion a familiar face to sky at night viewers and this brings me on to my own suggestion which I admit is not very convincing but the best I can do and I suggest that the Star of Bethlehem just could be due to two meteors just suppose the wise men were crossing the desert and they saw one of these rarely brilliant meteors moving ahead of them it wouldn't last for long they certainly recognized that as being something very unusual all right then little later on they see another meteor moving in the same direction with about the same brilliance a quite a coincidence I agree but not a too amazing one in view of the fact that we do have showers of shooting stars and that would explain first of all why nobody else saw it wouldn't invisible only from that part of the globe and also why nobody else could see it again when they went to look for it when they lost with using [Music] [Applause] the trouble with this idea is that meteors are common and even meteor showers are common and especially with the dark skies of 2000 years ago I don't think that seeing one or two even a whole host of meteors would have been considered that special but there is an extension to this idea that might be worth considering when you see a meteor you're seeing a tiny dust grain bone up in our atmosphere but larger objects do hit the earth and when that happens they leave quite a different visual impression as these fireballs shoot across the sky they seem to be heading for a touchdown on a specific point on earth and that could certainly be interpreted as a sign from the heavens these events are so rare and so spectacular that it would certainly have attracted attention 2,000 years ago they still do today in February 2013 an object 20 metres across entered the Earth's atmosphere traveling at 40,000 miles per hour it burned up producing the spectacular fireball across the Russian sky it exploded 30 kilometers above the city of Chelyabinsk the explosion was more than 20 times as powerful as the atomic bomb detonated over her Oshana the shockwaves injured a hundred and fifty people and damaged thousands of buildings events like that at Chelyabinsk aren't actually that rare we think that objects of that size hit the earth two or three times the century but most go unrecorded as they happen over uninhabited areas but you could see looking at those videos that if something had hit over the Middle East during the first century BC it would have been interpreted as a miraculous sign and written into the legends of the time and so that makes a meteorite strike our fourth candidate to be the Star of Bethlehem back on the quest for historical evidence for the star I've directed my search several thousand miles further east because the Babylonians weren't the only ancient civilization to make astronomical observations the Chinese were also making detailed records of everything they saw in the sky Christopher Cullen is an expert in ancient Chinese astronomy so Christopher tell us what we're looking at here we're looking at a chapter of the Honshu the book of Han a history of China written in about a hundred ad this is a record of phenomena seen in the sky and how accurate a record is this I mean is written a long time ago before what we would recognize as science if you like this was happening this was written by professionals the emperor maintains a staff of sky watchers whose job is to be up there noting down everything that happens and there's a reason for that he's explained on the first page of this chapter chapter 26 the stars and planets all the lights up there are a great like control panel of indicator lights and if one of them starts blinking or if a light appears where it's unexpected that means something big is happening because everything in the sky mirrors what's happening on the earth so it was the same idea that there's either of portents of omens of watching on the sky reflected yea human concerns yes yeah okay so here's the question so we're looking round about seven BC for being round about that's nighttime is there anything of note in in this book that we should look at in terms of bright objects well the nice thing about Chinese books is that they all got dates in them so we came through the chapter looking at her everything's gonna date there and we come to near the end to chapter and we see in the second year that's five BC obviously okay well that's all part yeah second month that's lunar month this is early marks to early April which again yeah this is not as good a broom star appeared in the constellation of the Ox for more than seventy days what do you that's pretty good too by brimstar presumably we're talking about a comics and most of the time I think when you see records and movement and statements about how long it was like a tale yeah it's usually called a broom star I go probably for a comet but it doesn't have to be I'm just trying to work out or me could it be something else could it be a supernova for example I would not say it was impossible it could be a supernova of course to prove it was a supernova what we'd like to do is to find the actual remnant the nebulae left today as we can with the Crab Nebula but there's no remnant being proposed for this and seventy day that's a well that gives us quite a wide area of time okay and they say later they say the fact it was that there for so long means that it really shows something big so much so that the Emperor was actually persuaded for a short while to start recounting the years of his reign from this year say not the second year that's the first year because something so important has happened wow that is really interesting so big political news this is five BC and that's this this broom star this commerce yeah would have been seen in the Middle East and how accurate do you think these records are cos we're going back a long way I mean are you confident in the dates for example yes I am basically Chinese dates in history are reliable to the year from about the middle of the 9th century BC this is fairly well established sometimes you will find someone's miss copied a month but if to check that look at the next entry the next entry tells us basically a little later Jupiter was seen moving through a certain constellation and they say it did this retrograde loops where you do a calculation to check you find that yeah that date is when Jupiter would have done the retrograde loop there are other things like the moon going in front of a particular star you can check and it did because that's absolutely fascinating this is a whole new area line of inquiry that I didn't even knew existed so thank you very much indeed it's been a great absolute treat sir look at this it's great thanks so [Music] far we've learned that the Star of Bethlehem may have been a number of things a bright supernova a rare alignment of planets a meteor or the rising of a star there are only two to go and the Chinese records immediately raised another prime candidate a comet we arks pantry scientist Allen Fitzsimmons to explain why he thinks the Star of Bethlehem could have been a comet I think comets are fascinating objects I always have done that's why I have worked in them all my life now historically the appearance of a comet has been seen as an omen of events here on earth and that's why I think it could have been a comet that took on religious significance as the Star of Bethlehem [Music] so the idea that a comet was the staff Bethlehem has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years in fact it was first written down to our knowledge by the Christian writer Origen in the year 248 AD but this is the picture that really puts comets in the frame it's by Giotto the finest painter of his time back in 1305 and it shows a typical nativity scene based around the infant Jesus and above the stable poised majestically in the sky is a beautiful comet comets come from the very outer edges of the solar system they are the frozen leftovers from the formation of the planets we might not know they existed at all if they weren't occasionally sent catapulting into the inner solar system and as they approached the Sun they reveal themselves by putting on the most extraordinary show and the closer they get to the Sun the brighter they get so when I first read these accounts by ancient chinese astronomers of a comet that could be seen for 70 days in the early morning skies i knew it must be incredibly bright for a part of that time also if it's in the morning sky it's near the Sun and those two things together make me think of sungrazing comets here we've got a set of images and wonderful movies of Comet Ison a Sun grazing comet better PHS two years ago and you can see it does get incredibly bright the reason that some glazes get so bright is that they get red-hot as they pass close to the Sun in a normal comics buy away from the Sun the sun's heat is enough to vaporize the ice that streams away as gas also releasing small dust particles and they go into forming the tails of the comet in a Sun blazing comet as it approaches the Sun everything starts getting red-hot and everything vaporizes the ice the comet dust even any rock that could be in there everything goes and in doing so that's what makes the Sun grazing comet so bright [Music] many of the chunks that we see in the satellite images are small just 10 to 15 metres across and we can't really see them from Earth but now and then a much bigger chunk comes along this is a picture of Comet McNaught the Christmas comet of 2006 on one of the brightest comets to be seen from Earth over the past thousand years so bright because it passed close to our Sun you can see the tail here pointing downwards towards the horizon as if indicating that something's happening over there surely if a comet like this had appeared in the Middle Eastern sky some 2,000 years ago the major I would have been drawn towards that direction and maybe ended up in a stable in the town of Bethlehem and there were other details of the Nativity story that suggest that a comet could have been the star Matthew's Gospel implies that the star was seen twice once to bring the Magi to Jerusalem a journey that must have taken weeks if not months and then a second time to lead them to Bethlehem and that behavior is typical of many comets so this is a first edition of Newton's Principia from 1687 and right at the front of the book we have this beautiful diagram showing the path of a great comet that Isaac Newton himself saw you can see how it appeared first of all we November 1680 in its way into the Sun it disappeared for a couple of weeks when it was closest to the Sun then reappeared in our skies in early 1681 and this showed that comets followed regular paths under the influence of the laws of gravity that Isaac Newton had discovered and it's this behavior of the comic that could explain how the Star of Bethlehem appeared twice to the major so putting it all together there is a bright comet seen at the right time by chinese astronomers if the staff bethlehem appear twice then comets can do that too comets have been seen as omens of important events for hundreds of thousands of years and a comet tail pointing down towards the eastern horizon could imply something important that's happening there so altogether if there was a stark Bethlehem I think it could have been a comet a comet just suddenly popping up always created a sense of instability and what was going on unexpected and often quite frightening it's not a good omen sure before the death of Nero comets exceeded the sky Julius Caesar the time of Julius Caesar's murder and this is not just about aliens this is the the Romans it's the Greeks is everybody but in other contexts comets aren't necessarily bad knees so there's a text in the book of Isaiah in the Jewish Scriptures that talks about a star falling from the heavenly realm into the underworld now this is a bad God a bad divine being who's being sent out of the heavenly realm and into the underworld so it's bad news for him but good news for the rest of humankind in the same way for those that think that the Star of Bethlehem is a comet it's bad news for King Herod but good news for the followers of Jesus with the addition of a comet that leaves one final candidate Maggie has been to meet mark khajur who believes the Chinese record in 5 BC is not a comet but something much more intriguing he believes that it was an event called a nova if he's right the Star of Bethlehem is still lurking in the sky exactly where the Chinese saw it [Music] [Music] and you're saying that the staff Bethlehem is still in the star field yes if my ideas of the Star of Bethlehem are right it's still there roundabout where it's marked with the arrow I can't see anything bright enough in there that could possibly be the Stars definitely because now the Star of Bethlehem is very very faint you may not even be able to see it with the biggest telescope in the world but what we do know from the Chinese records is it was pretty bright the Chinese say that they saw it for 70 days they just give this position in the sky close to alpha and beta Capricorn II it's a star that appeared stayed visible to the naked eye for about two-and-a-half months the Chinese monsoon came the Chinese lost it and it faded away during that time when they were able to look at the sky again it had disappeared so for me there is one simple obvious candidate for that which is an over a neighbor so discretional - neighbor is right an over is something very much smaller than a supernova so it's a pair of stars a binary star a big old red giant we see they're arriving at the end of its life and a little white dwarf star that's already been a rich and it's died and what is happening is this little white dwarf star is a cannibal and material from the red giant is spiraling down onto the white dwarf falls on gets hotter and hotter accumulates and accumulates and then suddenly boom you get to a critical point there's a critical mass and the whole thing explodes and a cloud of gas and dust goes out into space and it's very bright for a time months sometimes only a few days and then fades away and disappears and then slowly accretes material on top again and then ten years a hundred years a thousand years maybe even ten thousand years later boom again as the material built up it's got to get a critical mass before is that critical mass and it varies from neighbor to name it varies from Nova to Novik depends how much is falling onto the small all star how quickly it's happening how big the small star is no it gets hotter and hotter and hotter suddenly crisis and boom but on that basis if it goes up boom every so often it means that we could again see the Star of Bethlehem in the future exactly that's that's one of the beauties of this theory because as you said the start you can't see the star there but one day if you're patient if you keep observing the sky that star if it will really wasn't over will reappear it might not be in time for this Christmas special might not be for the next year's Christmas special but a thousand years it may happen it's a neat idea and it is possible but the Chinese records are of a star going Nova but we still need to explain why this particular event was so special Nova aren't particularly rare why would this one draw the three wise men to follow a star okay so the first thing it was bright so it wasn't just any Nova is the sort of Nova Yomi see once every few hundred years so that's one thing and then the second thing is that it followed a series of other interesting events we have that triple conjunction that was observed in six BC when Jupiter and Saturn came close together and separated and came close together again three times over a period of months Jupiter the king of the gods symbol of kings Saturn the changer of Ages if you're a persian astrologer that sort of thing would have been tremendously significance it marks something happening something thing was coming up and then just over a year later bang you get the brightest Nova that you've seen in the sky in centuries now's the moment get those camels wagons roll so in terms of its position what it draw the mage ion in the right direction that's the beauty of this theory it does everything that you need just the stars in their courses behaving naturally Matthew's Gospel says that the major I saw the star at its rising it would have been in the east at dawn they took sick weeks if they were in a real hurry maybe two months to reach Jerusalem they spoke to King Herod two months later where would the star be it rises a little bit earlier each night and then it would have been due south at dawn right over the town of Bethlehem and they would have followed it towards Bethlehem and it really would have guided them on that last stage of their journey say to you all the evidence adds up and to you the Star of Bethlehem was a neighbor this is just the simplest theory that's the beauty of it it's very very simple the stars in their courses do everything that you need and it's a natural event but it's a quite rare natural event and that's the beauty that it's what I like about the Novo theory well it's a nice theory so thank you very much for describing it to me and thank you very much indeed to you thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] we now have six plausible candidates that could have given rise to the Star of Bethlehem a nova or supernova a comet or meteor the rising of a star or alignment of the planets and there Chris knife have to assess the evidence and choose what we think was the most likely cause what do you reckon maybe I think more than homing in what I think it is I think I'd like to home in what I think it isn't right and meteors fall all the time I don't think that would be enough to cause people to leave their home and travel afar right and I guess if we'd had a really spectacular one like charile events we would have seen more records of it we might even somebody might even have found the meteorite touchdown so it seems unlikely to me yeah good down to five well what about the supernova this is the Christmas card Star of Bethlehem it's a bright new star that hangs in the sky there's me there as well the death of the star marks the birth of a king would be quite spectacular the problem is we don't see a remnant from this supernova where there has been one in the last few thousand years we see the nebula that's left over like the crab which is beautiful from a thousand years ago I think there's a gap that same safe fine let's also talk about this well this is the the rising of the star it happens every year why would this mark yo some significant event right we're either missing a few thousand messiahs or I agree I think this is the kind of thing you use to mark the new year right or to mark a significant annual event it's not a one-off we are now down to our three final possibilities the naver the comet and the planetary conjunction it's possible to make a compelling case for each of them at this point is down to the piece of evidence we choose to put the most weight on we know that the triple conjunction happened and was recorded by astronomers in the Middle East but I wonder if this subtle event would really have been significant enough because I didn't think it would be that spectacular in the sky yes it's almost the opposite planets get close to each other all the time we had Venus and Jupiter just the last month in the morning sky and and so the argument that it's this conjunction rests on this idea that there's something significant about the fact that it's Jupiter and Saturn the old king in the new king that it rests on the fact is in Pisces which according to one text is associated with this particular patch of land but the thing is we don't know what the right astrology was astrologers don't agree with each other today let alone 2,000 years and you can pretty much support any story you like on that basis I think this one gays as well yep so that leaves us with what an over and a comet the thing that both of these have going for them I think is that they're described in that Chinese observations quite like the idea of a cuz I love the idea of an over that it might appear again their the whole process can sort of a reignite and it could reappear in our night sky there's no evidence against it but there's not much evidence for me for it my fear with the comet is that in the past many people have associated comets with doom and see why would you especially a comet with the birth of a messiah a new king we should be careful about taking what we think about comments yes about comments and that belief days what the comet has over the Nova to me is that it looks like it's pointing right the comet has a direction it's an arrow they're all so beautiful and noteworthy so I can imagine following that and I think it can do the magical thing of disappearing as it goes round the back of the Sun and coming back again it was a very straightforward explanation for why it would be seen twice unlike the independent verification the fact that other sort had nothing to do with a story a story it was significant was commented upon across the world who knows that that could have got into legend and ended it ended up in the story if it's real for me it's a comet so I'd be happy to go over the comet right that's it then the sky at night verdict is that the Star of Bethlehem was most probably a comet that's it for this month and we're all fair next month to make way for stargazing live we'll be back in February but in the meantime you can still check out the website to find Pete's guide to the highlights of January's night sky and find out how to find a message in the stars with the whispering stars messaging service in the meanwhile get outside and get looking up good night Kim Novak and James Stewart star in our movie tonight Hitchcock's classic thriller vertigo is here on BBC four in just a moment [Music] you

Channel: Miguel Monteiro

Views: 193,358

Rating: 4.758039 out of 5

Keywords: space, cosmos, astronomy, bbc, sky at night, astronomia, espaço, Star of Bethlehem, Christmas Star, comet, star, Kepler, supernova, Kepler's Supernova, Dallas Campbell, Gospel of St Matthew, David W Hughes, University of Sheffield, jupiter, saturn, pisces constellation, magi, triple conjunction, heliacal rising, Sa'd al-Malik, alpha aquarii, lucky star of the king, the life of Brian, meteor, christopher cullen, alan fitzsimmons, nova, mark kidger, esa, christmas, jesus christ

Id: sMMkWvGz9jI

Length: 59min 2sec (3542 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019

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From the perspective of cosmological and mythological history, a BBC team attempts to discover the true identity of the star of Bethlehem.