Although the magi visited Jesus when he was a toddler (not a newborn), it is my favorite Christmas story from the Bible. I suspect that the star they saw was a very close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, as described in The Star That Astonished the World by Ernest L. Martin. Below is a poem that I wrote about the moment when they first saw such a meeting of the two brightest planets in the sky and were discussing what it might mean. The wise men, or magi, who came to worship little Jesus, seem to have undertaken their costly, long, and dangerous trip with no other motive than to…