Who Is John Bevis?

Only person Ever to See/Do What? Really?

With all the interest in the Christmas Star – yes there was a star – the Bible says so – whether it was a configuration of planets or a special miraculous starry-type object created by God I am not sure – but it was really, really neat to see two planets in my eyepiece of the telescope at the same time. Something you do not see every day. I just thank Jesus it was clear December 21.

But who is John Bevis?

John Bevis is an amateur astronomer who on May 28, 1737, was believed (according to this source) to see one planet actually pass in front of (or behind depending on how you see it) another planet.

It is called a mutual occultation of planets and it is incredibly rare. There will not be such an event until November 22, 2065 and that will be too close to the Sun to be visible from Earth. (It is Venus and Jupiter by the way. And speaking on Venus and Jupiter mutual occultations, one is June 17, 2 BC and that has been suggested as the Bethlehem Star BUT that assumes the death of Herod was not in 4 BC as most historians claim.)

John Bevis is probably the only human to see a mutual occultation in a telescope (The Greenwich Observatory UK telescope). Here is his report from Sky and Telescope in 1986.

Hat tip to Larry Bogan who complied the neat charts and information on mutual occultations.