Help on the 'Christmas Star'

I'm doing some research at the moment on the
'Christmas Star' or the 'Star of Betheleham'
and I'm digging around for books on the subject.
I wonder has anyone here read a good (astronomically)
book on the subject that would help in putting together
a club talk.
Also links links to sites would be a help.

Many of the books I've encountered so far have
an obvious bias to 'Proof of Gods plan' and such.
I'd like to approach this based on fact and to take
religious beliefs out of the equation altogether.

eg:


Cheers.

Hi Frank,

There was a good article about the Star of Betheleham in Sky&Tel last year or the previous... around Christmas time, funnily enough! I'll try and dig it out if you want and scan it for you. Let me know.

Phil.

Phil,

I was just about to make the same comment about the article in S&T.

Anthony.

Thanks lads.
I have that one put aside.

Frank,

Bart has done a bit of research in this area and gives a very good talk on the topic. Might be worth banging a PM off to him as he takes an approach which I think you are looking for.

Michael.

yea, the star of Bethlehem,
I think you got to decide was the whole thing made up in the first place, if you decide it was, then end of story.
IF you believe someone saw something, then you got to decide what it was, a fairly popular suggestion is that a planet (think it was Jupiter) passed extremely near Regulus in Leo with a few years of 1 AD, you can make the deduction some might make about Leo been the lion/king constellation and Jupiter the king of the planets, run it on starry night.
Then there is the usual miracle stuff and all that.