Les webcomics, parce que.

The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle?

let’s be a little more realistic; the wise men are hardly going to walk toward the star while it’s behind the Earth. Let’s assume that they only walk toward the star when it’s in the sky and the Sun has set.

In that case, their path actually takes them through Bethlehem:



If they don’t stop there, after a few years, they wind up orbiting Botswana:



What if the wise men followed a planet?

Planets move against the background of stars, so the paths they produce are more complex. Here’s where the Wise Men would’ve gone if they followed Venus:



And here’s their path for Mars:



If the three wise men had a hovercar that could move at highway speed over land and water (it’s in the gnostic gospels somewhere) and decided to follow Venus, they’d take a particularly weird path: