Happy New Year .. 2017 !! ..

.. we should have today wished one another IF the monk Dionysius Exiguus in the year (that we call nowadays) A.D. 531, when he was trying to count how many years before the Incarnationis Domini nostri Iesu Christi had occurred, if he had known better the middle time interval between two Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions.

He very probably knew that the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction he was observing night after night in those years 530-531 (graphics here on the left) was the 27th after the memorable triple Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that happened more than five centuries before in the constellation of Pisces, the one that - we know nowadays - happened in the year 7 b.C. at Herod's time and that is commonly referred to as the 'star of Bethlehem' (see graphics behind the title of the blog). But he probably didn't know the right time interval between a J-S conjunction and the next, so he was 6 years wrong in his estimation of the time when the triple J-S conjunction in Pisces had occurred. He said in the second half of Rome-year 753 instead of year 747 ab Urbe condita.

That's why we have wished today one onother "Happy 2011 !" instead of "Happy 2017", which would have been more correct and really ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Iesu Christi.

Anyway.. "Happy New Year" to all my readers, wherever you are in the almost 70 countries where this blog is read.