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Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life. 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. Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life.
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Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of life • 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
Stars, wanderers and the cycles of lifeimage credits • 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