 The patterns of stars in the sky do not change from one generation to the next  Ancient cultures developed stories from the patterns they saw  They gave names to patterns - like Orion and The Seven Sisters

 There are just 7 objects that are visible to the naked eye and that move amongst the patterns of the stars  One of them is the Sun  The Sun is so bright to us that other stars become invisible in daylight - but they are still there

 The Sun seems to move against a background of fixed stars  The sequence of patterns behind the Sun is called the Zodiac  The time taken for the Sun to move around the Zodiac is the same as the time taken for a cycle of the Earth’s seasons  You count your age according to these cycles

 The Moon is another of the 7 wanderers  Its visible sunlit part changes shape, as seen from where we are, between a bright full circle and a crescent  Our idea of a month comes from the reliable regularity of these cycles of apparent change of shape

 As well as yearly cycles of the Sun and cycles of the phases of the Moon, there are cycles of light and dark that give us day and night  Our lives are shaped by these cycles

 There are five other wanderers visible to the naked eye - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn  There are the same number of visible wanderers as days of the week  In English, three days are named after these wanderers - Sunday, Monday and Saturday  In some languages, all 7 days match the 7 objects that wander amongst the fixed stars

 People have never gone far from the Earth - seen here from the Moon  If we inhabited another planet or moon, the cycles of our lives would need to be very different

 Slide 1 - NASA and H Richer (University of British Columbia)  Slide 2 - NASA JPL  Slide 3 - Tau ‘olunga  Slide 4 - Fekete Csaba  Slide 5 - David Brodie  Slide 6 - NASA JPL Space Science Institute  Slide 7 - NASA