There are a lot of ways to see rays coming out of a star or other bright light. Just squinting will usually create the appearance of vertical rays, and anyone who's seen a lamp through a sheet or a piece of fabric is familiar with cross spikes. And, of course, prefiguring the cross in the Star of Bethlehem is an obvious enough visual trope that I wouldn't be surprised to see it appearing early on.
But I still think the spikes in telescope images have fed back heavily into the modern imagery.
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There are a lot of ways to see rays coming out of a star or other bright light. Just squinting will usually create the appearance of vertical rays, and anyone who's seen a lamp through a sheet or a piece of fabric is familiar with cross spikes. And, of course, prefiguring the cross in the Star of Bethlehem is an obvious enough visual trope that I wouldn't be surprised to see it appearing early on.
But I still think the spikes in telescope images have fed back heavily into the modern imagery.