What is the reason the wise men wanted to find Jesus?

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the magi (also called 'wise men') came following a star from the east, so that they could worship Jesus in the house where he was born. The author of Luke's Gospel knew nothing of this particular event, and the star was not recorded by any of the scribes who recorded all other interesting celestial events of the time. Even stranger is the reported ability of a star to move westward to Jerusalem then back towards the south-east to Bethlehem, where it enabled the magi to identify the exact house in which the baby Jesus was to be found.

Ian Wilson (Jesus: The Evidence) says the hard reality is that Matthew offers insufficient historicity for anyone to be confident that there was a star at all.