Star-struck

(Definitely best on a black background) 

I think all cultures have woven myths around the stars, and seen patterns in them and assigned to them familiar objects from earth: animals, birds, fish, tools; passed these things on from generation to generation. Along with the sun and moon, they are the most mysterious, even disquieting, things humans have encountered since we developed the power to reason. Something we could see clearly, even predict the behaviour of, but could not touch, smell, taste or hear - unlike almost everything else in our lives. Something we simply could not understand in the same way that we could a tree, a river, a fire or a deer. Perhaps the stories and the naming of the constellations makes them less frightening: brings them down to earth

I'm not any kind of expert on the night sky. I can recognise some of the best known constellations; I can distinguish a star from a planet; like most of us, I become mesmerised and meditative if I stare at the sky on a clear night, without light pollution, as more and more points of light become visible the longer you look. What I do know will have seeped in from my family when I was a child. I hope I get the chance to pass some of it to grandsons

This (the 7 bright stars in the centre) is the easiest and best known of all. To me it is always The Plough, but I'm aware of some of the other names: The Big Dipper, The Saucepan. Confusingly (to me as a child, anyway) it is part of, but not the same as, The Great Bear, and some people use that name when they mean just The Plough. I have just read that a lot of Germanic cultures call it some variation of The Great Wagon or The Great Wain - including Odin's Wain, which has a Tolkeinesque ring to it. All the stars have names too. To me, they are a little reminiscent of the Magi: Megrez, Alioth and Mizar, leading their camels across the desert. You see what stars do to you! 

I was taught to use The Plough to find the (North) pole star, Polaris, by lining up the top two stars in this image and following the line left until coming to the first bright star (not in this shot). I've read it can also be used in a similar way, using other pairs of stars from the seven to locate other stars and constellations in the sky. One of them used to be the pole star 4,000 years ago - across that sort of time scale, the night sky changes

You can also use it as a test of you eyesight. The central star of the 'handle' is actually two stars, a light-year apart, almost-but-not-quite in alignment. Good eyes can distinguish them. I can't decide if my poor little phone camera has succeeded or not; I'm astonished that it produced something as engaging as this at all