For a long, long, long, long, long, long time humans have been gazing up at the stars. And I mean who can blame them they're just so shiny.

As well as being pretty the stars were really useful to early humans. You see the stars always stay in the same position relative to each other. So pretty early on we began mapping them and forming constellations. They're patterns of stars which people thought kind of looked like things: a dragon or a warrior or a swan. You've probably heard of these 12 constellations. Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. They're the signs of the zodiac. They form a kind of circular pattern in the night sky, which the ancient Babylonians used as a calendar.

Of course, different cultures around the world had their own constellations. For example, while most western cultures know this group of stars as Orion's Belt or the saucepan. To the Yolngu people in the Norther Territory it's known as Djulpan or the Canoe.

The stars were also really useful for navigation. Early Polynesians were the first to use the stars to navigate the ocean. They followed the North Star which is a big bright star which always appears very close to the North Pole. Just like our Southern Cross appears very close to the South Pole. But as we used them to find our way on Earth, we also wondered what the stars actually were. In 1610 an Italian scientist, named Galileo Galilei, used a telescope to prove that Earth revolved around the Sun. Lots of people didn't believe him, in fact he was thrown in prison because religious leaders were so sure that everything revolved around the Earth.

REPORTER: Of course, now we've got the ability to look much further into space using telescopes here on the ground and telescopes in orbit.

They've helped us discover that our planet is just one of 8 orbiting the Sun which is just one of around 250 billion stars in our galaxy, which is just one of around 200 billion galaxies in the universe, phew.

BRENNAN: There are very few other fields, very few other situations where so much is unknown and so much new information is being discovered all the time.

On Wednesday these guys will be joining 30,000 other Aussies looking up at the sky for a world record attempt.

NESS: We're going to try and set a world record event across the country by getting over 30,000 people to look at the moon for 10 minutes.

It's part of ABC's Stargazing Live event which is to do with all things astronomical.

MALACHI: I love stargazing because it's a good way to spend your evening and a nice hobby to have.

These guys say its great thing to be involved in and they'd encourage anyone to get out and look to the stars.