More from the pages of Reach for Mars:

They saw groups of stars that they thought made shapes and gave them names. They  saw planets among the stars and gave them names. They used them to explain previously unexplainable events on planet Earth. They used them to navigate their way around our planet, and they even used them to predict our future (for better or worse). They invented telescopes so they could look at them more closely, which they made larger and larger so they could look at them even more closely. Today they fire telescopes into space so they can look at them really closely.