The famed star of Bethlehem, which heralded the birth of a new king and brought the Three Kings, or Three Wise Men, to Bethlehem, may in fact have been a comet, and not a star at all.

The approach of a long period comet might have been the star that the Three Kings saw in the sky and interpreted at the time to mean the birth of a new king. The famed star of Bethlehem could have also, however, been a close conjunction of two naked eye planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, which resulted in a brighter appearance of the two planets in the sky as they approached each other as seen from Earth.