The Great Christ Comet (52 page)

According to our calculations, the baby was born before dawn on October 20, 6 BC. The celestial nativity show in the eastern sky was over on October 22, 6 BC. This conclusion would have been confirmed on the morning of October 23. One may presume that, in this period, the Magi made their final preparations to travel to Judea by camel caravan in order to worship the newborn messianic King.
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Having made their travel preparations, the Magi must have got on their way to Judea quickly, probably departing Bab­ylon sometime during October 23–25. That is when the comet began to behave in a way that could have been interpreted by the Magi as a celestial prompt or usher.

By the time the Magi arrived in Judea, they had secured gifts for the Messiah—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Whether they purchased them in Bab­ylon or en route, these gifts clearly show the influence of the book of Isaiah, which is hardly surprising, since Isaiah 7–12 had been the main key that unlocked the meaning of Virgo's pregnancy and delivery. In choosing gold and frankincense, they were consciously bringing to the Messiah at his birth what the prophet had prophesied the Gentiles would bring him during his reign (Isaiah 60). In selecting myrrh, they may well have been acknowledging that the Messiah had been born to suffer and die and be buried, bearing the sins of many so that he might win a people for himself who might reign with him (Isaiah 53).

Westward Leading

The comet was very close to Earth at this time, and getting closer. Because Earth had crossed the orbital interchange prior to the comet, the focus of the cometary drama had, for human observers, shifted to the western sky. This glorious apparition in the western sky, and later the southern and western sky, continued for the whole of the Magi's journey.

With surprising haste, the comet appeared to advance across Ophiuchus, upper Sagittarius, Capricornus's head, and Aquarius before making it back to its home under the western fish in Pisces by November 3.
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Then over the next weeks it made its way to under
that fish's tail and the ribbon connected to it, where it was when the comet stood over the house where Jesus was, one night between November 23/24 and November 30/December 1, 6 BC (see
fig. 10.31
). Since it was in that vicinity of the sky that the comet had first appeared, this might well have seemed a very suitable climax, especially since Saturn and Jupiter were still nearby.

This description of the comet's movements after it switched to the western sky makes what the comet did at that time sound very ordinary. In truth it was anything but. For the whole time leading up to the point when the comet stood over one particular house in Bethlehem, it sported a long tail that was shortening. On October 23 the tail stretched across the entire dome of the sky. From that point on, it got smaller, initially in steep drops (by October 29 it had halved in length) and then more slowly. The length of the tail was actually a general measure of the progress that the Magi were making on their journey—the closer they got to Judea, the shorter the tail became. This may well have been a great encouragement to the Magi as they traveled westward. By November 23–30 the comet would have been about 33–38 degrees in length, considerably shorter than at its peaks, but still an impressive sight by any normal standard.

The comet's tail may have played important roles in the cometary apparition up to this point. It had possibly been the water being poured from Aquarius's water jug. It had probably formed the shaft and fletching of the Archer's Scorpion-slaying arrow. It may have looked like the tube of a magnificent trumpet announcing the Feast of Trumpets. And it had transformed the comet into the Messiah's long iron scepter to mark the Messiah's birth. Now, it turned the long-tailed comet into a majestic usher, guiding the Magi all the way to Judea, and more particularly to Bethlehem, and then directing them to their goal—the baby whose part the comet coma had played within Virgo.
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Having shifted to the evening sky, where was the comet's coma in the wake of sunset? For the first couple of weeks, the comet was migrating from the west to the southeast. On October 23 the Star was in the west-southwest. By October 25 it was in the southwest. By October 27 it was seen in the south. By the 29th the comet was in the south-southeast at sunset. From that point it steadily moved toward the southeast, getting there around November 9. Thereafter its movement within the celestial dome slowed to such an extent that it was less than the daily rotation of the sky, and so the comet appeared to edge slightly back the way it had come.
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From November 9 to 23, even as it was advancing across the belly of the western fish of Pisces, it gave up about 5½ degrees of the progress it had made with respect to its compass position (its “azimuth”).
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By November 30 it had given up another 5½ degrees. Nevertheless, when the Magi were on the last stage of their journey to the Messiah's home in Bethlehem, one night between November 23 and 30, the comet was appearing in the south-southeast at sunset.

Of course, when the astrologers looked to their left as they traveled westward from their homeland toward Judea, they were looking southward. During the early days of their journey, when the comet (i.e., the coma) was quickly moving to the south, the Magi may have felt like they were catching up with it. When the comet then started off its nightly journeys from a position alongside or slightly behind them, so to speak, which it did for most of their journey, it was naturally a great encouragement to them that they had already made good progress and should keep going on their extraordinary pilgrimage.

How did the comet's altitude change in the weeks after it shifted to the western evening sky? At sunset on October 23, viewed from Bab­ylon, the altitude of the comet nucleus had been 12 degrees at sunset. Every sunset
up until October 28 saw the comet move to a higher altitude, climaxing at just over 40 degrees, halfway up to the zenith. Thereafter it descended very slightly, bottoming out at around 38½ degrees altitude on November 4. After that, it again began ascending to a higher altitude until the end of November and beyond. On November 23–25 and 29–30 (calculating from Jerusalem) the nucleus would have been about 44–45 degrees and 46–46½ degrees respectively in altitude at sunset.

How did the comet tail's orientation change over the days and weeks? To use a crude analogy, in the weeks after October 22 the comet's orientation in the aftermath of each sunset was like a giant left-side (from the driver's perspective) windshield wiper sweeping from right to left that snapped off its pivot and went hurtling up into the air to the left and into the distance, even as it sought to complete the arc of its sweep. This was due to the fact that the comet in outer space was passing Earth and moving away from and indeed, so to speak, “behind” it.

Obviously, the higher up (altitude) and further south/southeast (azimuth) the comet was at sunset, the longer it took for the comet to set. On October 23 the comet (nucleus) started to set about 45 minutes later than it had on the 22nd. Each night thereafter until the night of the 26th/27th the comet set roughly an hour later. Over the following nights the gap between sunset and the comet's setting continued to increase, although the increase steadily became less impressive. The gap peaked on November 9/10, decreasing thereafter, albeit to an insignificant extent.

What did the comet look like as it moved across the heavens each night?

To employ an imperfect analogy, the comet was like a javelin. At sunset on October 23 it was as though the javelin were being thrust from close range into the ground in the west in front of the Magi. Over the following days it was as though the javelin were being thrown from ever greater distances to the left, each time landing ahead of them. After the first week, when the comet was in the southern-southeastern sky, it would have seemed that the javelin was being hurled upwards from a position left of the Magi and moving across the sky in an arc until it “landed” pointing downwards in front of them. On October 23 the javelin hit the ground at a 60-degree angle. The following evening it struck the earth at an approximately 55-degree angle. Thereafter the angle increased until, on November 23/24 and November 30/December 1, it was landing at an 80-degree angle.

To appreciate what the comet was doing each evening and night from about a week into their trip, when the comet was appearing at sunset in the southern sky, it may perhaps help to imagine a massive, transparent, hollow, rainbow-shaped arch. The bases of the arch remain on the ground while the arch is being hoisted up by its “keystone” until it is upright (the arch represents the ecliptic, the path of the Sun across the sky). Now imagine that, each night, a streamer (representing the tailed comet) is being launched inside the transparent arched tube while the arch is being raised. The streamer is launched from about halfway along the arch when the arch has been raised up to a 45-degree angle (this represents the comet at sunset). Then the streamer steadily makes its way to the end of the arch, reaching it when the arch is almost upright (this represents the setting of the comet). You are standing between the bases of the arch. As the streamer moves along the rising arch, its whole orientation seems to you to change from being almost horizontal to being almost vertical. This is just like the comet along the ecliptic. Since the comet was basically parallel to and right beside the ecliptic, its orientation was basically the same as that of the ecliptic. The ecliptic arc was steadily and increasingly rising up to a near-vertical position as the hours rolled by each night. As it did so, the stars and constellations—including, of course, those along the ecliptic,
together with the comet—followed their daily westward course. The result was that the straight, long-tailed comet's whole orientation appeared to change dramatically over the course of each night from the point of its appearance after sunset until its setting.

What did the comet look like when it set from October 24 to November 30/December 1? During that period the comet was shrinking. Indeed, if the Magi had drawn images of the comet just before it set every night and flicked through an ordered collection of them quickly, they would have got a very clear vision of what was happening in outer space (
fig. 10.32
)—the comet was passing Earth and moving away into the distance. After all, the comet was passing by Earth (its closest approach to Earth [perigee] was October 24/25) and then getting farther and farther away from it (
fig. 10.33
).