means The act of looking up at the night sky to observe stars, planets, and other celestial objects, often for pleasure or study.

from A plain English compound, stitched together from "star" (Old English steorra, a cousin of Latin stella and Greek aster) and "gaze" (a verb of likely Scandinavian roots, related to dialectal Norwegian and Swedish words for staring intently). Together they describe exactly what they say: fixing your eyes on the stars. The figurative sense — being dreamy, impractical, lost in lofty thoughts — followed naturally, since anyone caught staring skyward is plainly not minding the road ahead.