Living in a city, I miss the stars at night. There’s always a glow from the street lights causing “light pollution”, as the astronomers term it.

There’s nothing better than being away from conurbations and being able to look up and soak up the stars. I like to call it “counting the stars”. It’s not that I actually count, but simply look up and see the entire sky in all of its beauty.

Occasionally, a satellite will stream overhead, it’s steady and straight pace drawing a bead above. Or an aeroplane will fly overhead, blinking as its passengers sleep, watch inflight-entertainment, eat economy-class chicken and wonder where they are, and who are in the homes and lights below.

Some of my best thinking has been done looking at stars. It’s a meditation too, peaceful.

I once had a telescope and would spend frosty hours looking at faraway objects, Mercury, Mars and Orion’s Belt.

And the Moon, its acned face, its 50 shades of grey. Cold nights too bring out the best stars — they shimmer more brightly.

The best stars I have ever seen were at sea, far away from coasts and lights. The sky seems huge, filling horizon to horizon with the glories of galaxies and our Milky Way. It’s like a river that flows across the sky. It’s no wonder that ancient Egyptians looked up and saw it just like the Nile. And they looked at Orion’s Belt, and saw two bright stars in a line, and a smaller third one slightly offset. They were inspired by the heavens, and built their pyramids in Giza to reflect what they saw — two large in a straight line, the smaller third slightly offset.

I like to look always for the Plough, otherwise known and the Great Bear. The seven stars change in shape depending how they’re viewed or the time of the year, or the location. But they always return to the familiar shape. It’s a celestial affirmation that everything will right itself given time.

Last week, Nasa scientists said they had discovered seven Earth-like planets just beyond our solar system. The new exoplanets are positioned just right — not too hot and not too cold — for liquid water. We now believe water is the essential element for life. Indeed it is, if you’ve ever had to thirst for a drop.

But life too comes in many forms and bacteria thrive in bubbling sulphur pools on the edge of volcanoes, in vents at the very deepest trenches of our oceans, and even now as we have recently discovered, in crystals in deep and hot caves for more than 50,000 years.

When I see photographs taken from the International Space Station of our blue Earth below, I find a wonder in the clouds and the oceans. It’s fun to try and figure out exactly where the space station is flying over, trying to identify the coasts or terrain far below.

I find artists’ impressions of new worlds to be fascinating too. They almost bring those new worlds bravely to life, as if life itself was there, waiting for us to visit and introduce ourselves, like new neighbours in this wonderful universe we all share.

But when you look at the stars, and try and understand the sheer size of space, the universe, it makes my head spin. The distances are vast, the time taken for the light from stars to reach us can be measured in thousands of light years. And the sky we look at is actually a kaleidoscope of different lights emitted from stars in the past. We are not looking at the here and now, but a collection of pasts — though in the present.

At times, when the sky is full of stars, you can almost reach up but never touch. In this universe we are but small. Some would say insignificant, I say not. We are just largely indifferent.