Searching for the Star of Bethlehem (from Christianity Today)

This article has the latest data from various attempts to identify the star of Bethlehem. The latest suggestion posits the star as being the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, which we have been watching in the southern sky for the last month or so. However, this work by Reneke posits a date of 2 B.C., well after Herod's death, which doesn't fit biblical data.

I think the most pertinent data in the article is this section:

The story in Matthew's Gospel seems to indicate that the people of Judea were oblivious to the Star. So, at least one scholar has taken a different approach to identifying the Star of Bethlehem.
"I set out to find what a stargazer of Roman times would have recognized as the star of a new Judean king," wrote retired Rutgers University astronomer Michael Molnar in the preface of his 1999 book, The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi.
Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of astronomy at Harvard University, thinks that Molnar is on the right track. "He has made a serious attempt to situate the Star in terms contemporary with the event, tying it in with numismatical evidence and Roman imperial horoscopes," he said. "Too many have tried to formulate the Star in modern terms, without considering the first century context."
Molnar said it was an ancient coin that initiated his Star quest. "That coin had Aries the Ram on it," he said in an interview. "My research of several astrological manuscripts from Roman times showed that the kingdom of Judea was represented by Aries the Ram."
Molnar's extensive research in primary sources led him to a set of conditions that "pointed like an astrological road sign to Jerusalem." On April 17, 6 B.C., the royal planet Jupiter rose as a morning star and was eclipsed (technical term: occulted) by the moon while it was located within the constellation Aries.
Later the earth in its inner orbit passed Jupiter and for a week in December of 6 B.C. Jupiter appeared to be standing still or drifting backwards. The astronomical term is retrograde motion, and could explain why Matthew 2:9 states that the Star stood still over Bethlehem.
(The birth of Jesus around 6 B.C. fits what scholars know from other sources, since the gospels indicate that Jesus was born before the death of Herod. Herod's death is believed to have occurred around 4 B.C., just after an eclipse that's mentioned in ancient sources. That Jesus was born B.C. is due to a calendar miscalculation centuries later.)

If correct, Molnar's data would allow for the Magi to see a sign that would cause them to arrive on or near the time of birth, the December date would be appropriate (the church father Hippolytus in the 2nd century A.D. affirmed a December 25 date), and it all times out before Herod's death in 4 B.C. (which it must since Herod sought to kill the infant Jesus).