1 Kepler’s De Vero Anno (1614)
In: The Star of Bethlehem and the MagiSearch for other papers by Owen Gingerich in
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Abstract
As a young teacher in Graz in the 1590s, Johannes Kepler became fascinated with the pattern of conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter (which occur approximately every 20 years) and the way they moved around the zodiac in an 800-year cycle. He had the opportunity to follow the beginning of a new 800-year cycle in 1603–04 and was astonished when a brilliant (super)nova appeared near Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars on 11 October 1604. The time of the birth of Jesus would have been near another of these conjunctions, two 800-year cycles earlier, and Kepler conjectured that a conjunction just beginning a series in the so-called fiery signs could have triggered the star of Bethlehem. He recorded his conjectures in De stella nova (1606) and then again, with more chronological detail, in De vero anno (1614), in the year in which University of Groningen was established.