Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Sian Proctor and John Read on teaching babies to love the Cosmos

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

“Baby's Guide to the Night Sky” introduces the youngest kids — down to newborns — to constellations and the wonders of the Cosmos. It comes from two people who've spent their lives chasing that same wonder in very different ways. This week, we are joined by authors Sian Proctor and John Read. Sian Proctor is a geoscientist, artist, poet, and commercial space astronaut who served as pilot of Inspiration4 in 2021, becoming the first Black woman to serve as a mission pilot in space. John Read is an astronomer and science communicator who left a career in corporate finance after a single look through a telescope changed his life. He now hosts the YouTube channel LearnToStargaze and has authored several astronomy books, including “A Kid's Guide to the Night Sky.” We'll talk about how the two of them met, how they turned a lifetime of expertise into something a baby can enjoy, and why it's never too early to start looking up.  Stick around after the interview for What’s Up with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, to review the book and walk through some of the night sky objects it features.  Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-babys-guide-to-the-night-skySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Teaching babies to love the cosmos. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah al-Ahmid of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. This week, commercial space astronaut Sion Proctor and astronomer John Reed joined me to talk about their new children's book, Baby's Guide to the Night's Sky, and why it's never too early to fall in love with the cosmos.

And then we'll get Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, take as a kid's author, in What's Up. If you love Planetario Radio and want to stay informed by the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. Inspiring the next generation of explorers is something that we talk about a lot on this show. But what does that actually look like when the audience is still in diapers? It turns out that even the very youngest children can start building a relationship with the night sky,

long before they have words to describe what they're looking at. That early sense of wonder can plant something that lasts a lifetime. Baby's Guide to the Night Sky, published by source books and on sale since July 7th, introduces the youngest kids, down to newborns, to constellations and the wonders of the cosmos. It comes from two people that have spent their lives chasing the same wonder in very different ways. Dr. Cyan Proctor is a geoscientist, an artist, and a poet. She was also a commercial space astronaut who served as the pilot on Inspiration 4 in 2021, becoming first woman commercial space pilot and the only African-American woman to be a mission pilot.

She flew alongside Commander Jared Isaacman, who's now our NASA administrator, along with mission specialist Chris Sambroski and medical officer Haley Arsino. You'll hear a little bit about each of them in this show. Before that flight, Sian was twice a NASA astronaut candidate finalist, and she spent months in a simulated Mars habitat with high seas. John Reed is an astronomer and science communicator who left his career in corporate finance after a look through a telescope changed his life. He went back to school and earned a degree in astrophysics,

and now he's the host of the YouTube channel Learned to Stargaze. He's also authored several astronomy books, including a kid's guide to the night sky. Here's my conversation with Cyan Proctor and John Reed. Hey, Sian and John, thank you for joining me. Hi, thank you for having me. Hello. So I feel like this conversation is, it feels like a little bit of a continuation of a conversation that I had last year with Haley Arsinoe, who was one of your crewmates on inspiration for Sian. She wrote a book called Astronaut Haley's Brave Adventure, which was her kids' book version of her adult book.

And now it's like, in my brain, I'm just waiting for Jared Isaacman to drop his own kids' book. Yeah, you know, it was so great to watch Haley on her journey from coming back from space and and doing kind of like her memoir and then a young adult walk and then her children's book and being inspired by her and her story. And, you know, of course, I went space through art and poetry and thinking about like, oh, okay, well, how do I get into the publishing world and enter John Reed, who we've been friends. he's like, yeah, I publish stuff all the time. And I'm like, hi, John. That's wonderful to hear. Did you guys kind of write those books in tandem? You're separated in publication date by about a

year. No. So we did not. Haley kind of had her thing going and I knew that her books were coming out. And I love the fact that she put a character of me in her book. And so that's always nice when your crew member kind of gives you a nod. But John and I, I honestly didn't know how to go about getting a book published when I came back from space. And John was like, well, you can self-publish. And so he has been the publisher of all my books, beginning from the very first one I did, which was Space to Inspire the Art of Inspiration, which was a poetry art book. But I think the most proud I've been about the books we've published together was,

Earthlight, which is my science book. And then he was like, hey, I've got this other book coming down the pipeline and you're a poet, would you help me on it? And I was so honored when he asked me to help with the baby's guide to the night sky. You've also written many books, John. Can you tell us a bit about your book series on Stargazing? Yeah, so I ended up leaving my job 10 years ago in corporate finance in California to do astronomy full time. And that's all because of the books. And so I got started in around 2010 when I was given a telescope for Christmas after picking up a little telescope at the pharmacy,

seeing Saturn, getting inspired, and then asking my wife for a bigger telescope. And I was also given, and this goes back to a conversation I had with you before the show, a 96 lecture series by an astronomer named Alex Villapanco. and combine the telescope, which was my introduction to amateur astronomy, with the science of astronomy from this class from Alex Filipenko on DVD. And that's what ultimately inspired me to go and join a volunteer outreach group at the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society in the East Bay of San Francisco. And then write a book that was effectively for the people that I knew to help them choose targets.

And after a couple of years, I realized how. to put a book online. I taught myself to self-publish like Cyanne was talking about, and the book effectively over about two years went sort of viral. And that was enough to quit my job and go get an astrophysics degree and write more books. That's amazing to hear. I mean, for people who don't know this context, I did research with Alex Filipenko when I went to UC Berkeley. And when I graduated with my degree in astrophysics, my mom bought me that exact same DVD lecture series. So I think I have it on my shelf upstairs right now. That's amazing. Yeah, and I often recommend that because Alex is such a great science communicator and a great

teacher. And then when I went and taught an online astronomy course, I was very inspired by the work that he did. So, yeah. That's amazing. It's wonderful how the space community is so large, but also so small. And I did want to ask, you know, how did people react when you decided to step away from your finance career and do something like go into astrophysics? two things. Like my family was like, are you kidding? Like, because I had the house in San Francisco and another house in South Carolina and they're like, you're going to leave that all to be an author and go to go back to undergrad because I had to go to undergrad before I did grad school. But the people I worked with at Clorox in San Francisco were like, well, obviously. His head's been in the clouds for years. This guy has checked out. And so they were like, Go, go follow your dreams. And we wish we could come with you. It's funny because I've been reflecting on this a lot as I've kind of taken on Planetary Radio and moved on through my career, right? People ask me for advice. And all I can say

to them really is that wanting to do something and having the passion for it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to succeed. But you are guaranteed to fail if you never try, right? And if you do succeed, I feel like it is super important for us to then reach out and to uplift and to teach the people around us so we can elevate their dreams too. And I feel like you both have done that in both of your careers. And it's really embodied in this book, not just that you're reaching out to people, but trying to inspire even the youngest among us. And I really value that.

Yeah, it was a real honor when John, you know, reached out to me because I've always kind of reached out to him for help when it came to my own work and publishing. And so I felt, you know, very honored that he was. like, hey, I can't get this poetry part correct. Can you help me? And that was really nice to get that call from him. How did you guys originally meet? Oh, it was on Tuesday night space happy hours with the Humans to Mars Society, I believe, was the first time we met. Yeah. It would have been, what, 2019, 2020? Yeah, late 2019 or early 2020. Because it was around the time of the pandemic began that that happy hour kicked off.

And then inviting him to the analog astronaut conference. And so I think you've come every year. Yeah. I've been there. Every year it's been in person. So the first year it was online and I was not there. Yeah. But every year after, which is wonderful.

If anyone wants the most fun conference like in America, four or five days at Biosphere 2 and you get to stay in the casitas. It's an absolute blast. And you get to meet Sayan and all sorts of other people in the space community. and just party and learn at the same time. I was literally just talking about this specific experience recently because I was talking about asteroid Benu for Asteroid Day on a live stream. The little kid who named Astroid Day, Mike Pusio,

later on Matt Kaplan, the creator of Planetary Radio, bumped into Mike Puzio at that exact event where he told him that because of that experience, he wanted to become an astronaut and he was on that path. So it sounds like a really good time. I would love to go see you guys there sometime. From next year, April, I think 28th to the first week through the first weekend of May. Well, John, your YouTube channel at this point has kind of blown up as well,

learned to stargaze. You have over 81,000 subscribers at this point. What would you say is the most common question that you get from total beginners? The most common question is how do I get into astronomy? And that doesn't necessarily mean a telescope, even though most of my videos are about telescope. So I think going forward, I'm going to make this a lot more broad and take it on a journey and the goal being how to experience awe of the night sky. And that can come in various different forms.

You've also built Stargays Nova Scotia from the ground up. It's a whole side project. And yeah, actually over your shoulder, beautiful image. Can you tell us what that project is and why you decided to take this on? Yeah. So I have this belief that the stars belong to everyone, which is a question. quote by astronomer Helen Hogue, and that everyone should be able to experience the wonders of the night sky in an accessible way. And I realized after hunting for this comet that should have been

visible in the night sky that I couldn't find any place within an hour drive of our city where the towns hadn't put in a street light to sort of block off the view of the sky. And I realized that if anyone was going to create this space, it was probably going to have to be me. And so anyway, we looked at this real estate map. It was me and astronomer Tiffany Fields at the Burke-Affney Observatory one night and we're just like, wouldn't it be great if there was a piece of property in this blue zone?

If you look at a light pollution map, blue is fairly dark. There's this random blue zone on this peninsula near our city. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a place for sale there? And right in the middle of that blue zone, there was a property for sale. It was 26 acres with a thousand foot of lake frontage

on a ridge. And I was like, no kidding. And I went there and I snuck on to the property at night, like move through the trees like underbrush, which is almost entirely impassable and got to the top. And then at that point, I experienced that feeling that we all long for when we think of astronomy, which is that feeling of awe and discovery. And I saw the stars with the clarity that I had never seen before and felt like I had the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope.

And that's, I need to share this with the world. And so we immediately, I'd say we and my wife and I immediately called our real estate agent and was like, we need to buy this property like stat and we made it happen. That's so beautiful. I don't know what portion of humanity has never had that experience at this point because we all live in light pollution. But I've seen it time and again. I'm literally going camping this next weekend to get away so I can go see the stars. But whenever I do that, I try to bring people with me that have never experienced the night sky. and I've seen them completely break down. They've never seen the Milky Way with that clarity. And so I think it's really important that there are places like that,

and especially when they can find science educators like you there to help them on that journey. I'm sure that's going to be really meaningful for people. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the entire range of human emotion as you show people the stars. Like you have some people, they cry. Some people don't believe it. Especially if you're looking through a telescope and they're like, how are you doing this? But then other people scream with joy. And they become giddy.

And it's so amazing that, you know, we can, Cyan and I, our job, I feel like, is to get people to feel those emotions in whatever medium that we choose to express ourselves in. And so for me, it's the experience of awe of the night sky. And for Cyan, it's the feeling of earthlight, the feeling of being bathed in the light that earth takes sunlight and transforms it into earthlight.

And that makes us feel a certain way, feel a certain beauty. And she can obviously talk a lot more about that. Yeah, no, but when John's talking about those emotions, I get giddy. And it's really funny because I was touring the Inspiration 4 building yesterday at Space Camp. And there was this picture of us about to launch, you know, a launch picture. And the guy asked, you know, what I felt at that moment. And he was like, because Chris Simbrowski, my crew member has a story about you at that moment.

And I'm like, really? And I'm like, oh, well, I was focused on my screen and, you know, being the mission pilot. And he's like, well, Chris Sambroski says, like, a few seconds after liftoff, he hears you on the comms going, we. And I'm like, really? Because I don't remember that at all. But that would be me. Like, oh, this is amazing. So I saw Chris at the bar last night at the hotel at Space Camp.

and he's like, yeah, I have the audio. He's like, I recorded it. And so he shot me the recording. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm excited five years later to find out this little nugget of audio exists. Just so overcome with the adventure, you blacked it out. That's amazing. Well, you know, that's, but that I knew was the case when I experienced pure, pure joy,

because we went to see crew two, NASA crew too long. They were the launch right before hours. So, you know, they brought us out, SpaceX did. So they wanted us to see what it was like to experience a launch on a Falcon 9. And there's this video of me that's in, I think, the Netflix series. When a countdown hits zero and they're lifting off, I'm literally jumping up and down. Like, oh my God, like a little kid. Had no memory until I saw the Netflix series.

I was like, look at me. That's me jumping up and down. Because in the moment, those emotions take over. And I think that that's what, you know, when John's talking about dark sky, Nova Scotia, and wanting to create this experience, it's that where your emotions are so high that you just get this moment of awe and wonder.

And I think with, you know, baby's guide to the night sky, the first time you're reading to your little baby and the baby's reacting and looking at the, photos with you. I feel like that's the reason, at least, you know, for me, when I think about this book, I think about that and the emotions that a parent gets to have with their child through this book. What do you feel are the most impactful parts of your experience in space that you wish you could impart on children? Oh, Earthlight, 100%, you know, because, and maybe that's the

next baby's book we write. John is an earthlight for babies. But this whole idea of we learn about sunlight and we learn about moonlight at an early age, but we don't learn about earth light. And to me, that's the most significant light there is because it's that transformation of sunlight into earthlight that enables life to exist here on our planet and really kind of understanding this relationship and us all having a relationship with the term, Earthlight and what it symbolizes. It would be great to have that from an early age, right?

So that they learn, oh, when they walk outside, they're not walking out into sunlight. They're really walking out into Earth light. And what that means for them as a human, but also the relationship they have with us, we have with our planet. One of the things that really got me into space when I was little was going to my local planetarium. And I know that you've been working on this Earthlight Planetarium show, which premiered at Boston Museum of Science. And I love that you're trying in another way to impart this on kids.

What do you think that Shepton perspective could do for people who are young, getting that into their brain before they even have words to really understand what it means? Well, again, I think it's a part of that is that emotional connection. And it was, what's fun is that, you know, John helped me with the Earthlight book, the science book, beautifully laid out science book, really kind of like a coffee table book, where him and his wife did all of the illustrations for it. And then I, because you got your crew and I assembled this crew to help create the Planetarium Dome Show, Earthlight World, based on the science of that book. And so John came out for the premiere. And I would like to hear his perspective because he, he instead of, you know, I was in it for a while building it and seeing the assets and the music. But he came in kind of cold. He knew about the book Earthlight because he helped create it and produce it and stuff.

And now he's sitting in Earthlight world for the first time having no clue. So John, what did you think? Yeah. So if I were to travel to space and go up into the cupola, I would expect to feel like I felt watching Earthlight World in the Planetarium show. Because it made me feel something that I feel like you could only get by doing it for real. And it made me want to see the world in the way that an astronaut sees it from above. And the show is really magical. So you have this photo real version of the earth that you fly over and sort of experience looking down.

But then it turns into art. So you've got this beautiful kaleidoscope earth that you also see during the show. Combined with just amazing music, which is done by some of your friends, Mary Liz or Anu, Test Shot Starfish there doing the music. And it takes you into this really ethereal state of mind. that's almost a pure emotional state of mind when you watch it. It's not like a planetarium show where you're like learning about stars and flying through space. No, it's just focused on getting you to feel like an astronaut feels when they're looking down at the earth. And at the same time, appreciating art and music.

So that was my first impression. Yeah, I hope you get a chance to see it. You know, ideally it will get distributed out. So the listeners ask your local planetarium. planetarium, when is Earthlight World coming because you want to see it? You want it to be brought to your community. I would love to go see that. I mean, I think one of my first planetariums was at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. And now that I'm going there doing space advocacy every year, I would love to see it there and go see it up on that big dome that first kind of inspired me.

Me too. And you know, my spacesuit Leo, I call her Leo, because that's my call sign. My spacesuit, Leo is at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on display now. She went on display last year. I took a picture of it when I was there just a few months ago. Yay! But, you know, there are so much complexity to the way that you can feel about space, the things you can learn about it. How do you take what's in the night sky and try to distill that down for people who are

literally the youngest among us, like zero to two years old? Yeah. Well, the nice thing about the night sky is that it changes every season. And there's really only a few prominent constellations that sort of appear at that season at a given point in time. So for anyone that looks up in the sky in the northern hemisphere's winter, they're familiar with Orion. And typically they only identify the three stars in a row and maybe Beatleuice above and the bright blue star Rajel below. And having only a few constellations, to learn at any one time makes it very digestible. And so that's the way when we wrote the kids' book, we organized it by season. So the kids first look up in winter, and they see Orion and the dog, Canis Major, going across the sky, and they see Taurus, the Bull.

And it's done in such a way that the constellations in the book, in the spreads, are laid out exactly as you would see them in the night sky. And so it'll be neat as if a kid reads them, this, you know, many times as we do, we read our kids the same, same books over and over night after night. Eventually, that kid is going to go out there, look up into the sky, and see exactly what they saw in the kids' book. Their science got the picture of it right there. And I know that my kids can identify this stuff now without a problem at all. I have three boys, and they live sort of vicariously through me. But the other nice thing about the wintertime is

that sunset, at least where we are at about 45 degrees north latitude, the sunset is before 5 o'clock. So you're at least a few hours before bedtime. The kids can actually experience the night sky. In summer, they need to stay up a bit later. But now that my older kids are 11 and 12, they love staying up with me and doing the YouTube videos and things. But they can look up and identify the very few prominent constellations and star patterns like Cygnus, which you can recognize by the Northern Cross or Scorpius, which I think looks like a big claw and Sagittarius, which looks like a teapot.

So like you can look in the book and recognize these patterns and then go out in the night sky and they're right there. And so I feel like from that perspective, we've really simplified it to just the few most prominent star patterns and they're just easily digestible for anyone. And I remember as a kid teaching myself the constellations because we didn't have this book when I was little, which was a while ago.

And, but really kind of getting connections with certain ones like John was saying. And of course, Orion has always been one of my favorites. And I had this magical moment in space where I'm floating up in the cupola. It's nighttime. The sun has not quite come. We haven't come into the sunrise yet. So it's dark. I think we might have been over the Pacific.

so it's super dark and off to the side you can see the stars and i have this moment where i'm floating there and you know it's almost like um when you go from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere and you see the night sky and you're like wait a second you know as you orientate yourself and i had this moment where i'm like is that is that Orion you know you're floating so you're like is that Orion i think that's Orion and then it clicks. You know, the three stars and you kind of line it and you got more stars because you're in space and you're like this and this and you're like and then you get that kind of again that that awe like that feeling of joy, you know. And I imagine, you know, when kids learn this baby's book and then get old enough to go out and start finding those patterns

in the night sky, it's going to be that same kind of awe. wonder I had when I was floating up in space and being like, is that Orion? I think that's Orion. It feels like coming home after a long trip. I got this great photo of Orion from space as a result of that. That's beautiful. When I was a kid, I definitely got my hands on books, but they were for, you know, older audience. I would slip through them, trying to memorize them. And then I'd go out and I would just talk my parents' heads off about all the constellations out there in the sky. So, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of parents out there that are about to have the exact same experience that my parents did with me, but because of this book, which is beautiful. Yeah.

They can actually graduate from Baby's Guide to the Night Sky to our previous book, which was Kids Guide to the Night's Guy as well. So you don't need to stop by just Baby's Guide. As they get a little older, we have the next one in the series as well. But that one's been out for a few years. And what I love about this is that parents, if you don't know anything about the night. sky, you can go on this journey with your kids from the moment they're babies and you just starting to share this with them because you will become familiar with the night sky along with them. And then hopefully that will cause both of you to want to go out and see this.

And then once you start, again, stargazing, you can go and graduate on to John's next books and keep moving up and up. So as your kid grows and develops and has this love for the nice sky in astronomy, you can develop that too with them. And it can be a real family affair. And that's what I like about John is that his family, including the dog, are involved in all of his stargazing. We actually had a raccoon make a surprise appearance in yesterday's video. If anyone saw that, which is pretty cute. That's amazing.

Was the dog in this kid's book modeled after your dog? John? You know what? Maybe it was. So the artist, Pumbundi, is from Canada as well. And we sent her so much source material to go off of. And we actually modeled the book to the best of our ability. We put all the constellations in and we put in just a ton of images that I had taken for her to draw from to make these images. So it's very probable that the puppy in the book is actually out of golden retriever, Stella. I wanted to mention, too, that I do love the way that you've laid out this book because it not only shows it directly what's on the night sky by season,

but you've also included people in both the northern and southern hemisphere, which I think is very important for the accessibility of this book. How did you approach that? Because, you know, in all likelihood, most of your sales are probably going to be in the northern hemisphere. Yeah, so I've actually converted several of my books. there's an organization called Passage Flight run by Lee Guillaat, and he takes a cargo plane and flies school supplies to low-income communities.

And I'm a pilot from a long time ago, and I was like, that is the absolute coolest charity that I have ever heard of. It involves planes and space. They take telescopes with them. And so I called Lee after hearing about this project, and I was like, can I write your textbooks? Can I write your astronomy textbooks? And he says, yes. And I'm like, I'm going to do that cost, like, whatever.

But I need a month to flip all the star charts. And so we had to go. And because if you're south of the equator, like Orion, for us, looks like a hunter standing up. But for them, you know, it's upside down. And in some cultures in South America, it's not a hunter. It's a cow. So, like, it's other things.

Or in the South Pacific, it's a cat's cradle, the rope toy. And so switching, not only rotating the star maps, but, you know, being aware of the different cultures as well is something that we've had to, you know, weave through all our books that, you know, hey, these are the constellations that we've chosen in the Western ones, but they also have different names and different cultures. So having done that several times before, inspired us to do that for this book as well. We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Sian Proctor and John Reed after the short break. Hi, Bruce Betz here, Chief Scientist at the Planetary Society. Our organization is strongly committed to defending our planet from an asteroid or comet impact. Thanks to the support from our members, we've become a respected independent expert on the asteroid threat. So when you support us, you support planetary defense.

It's a lot to do, and your support is critical to power all this work. That's why we're asking for your help as a planetary defender. Together, we're advancing the global endeavor to protect the Earth from asteroid impact. Imagine the ability to prevent a large-scale natural disaster. You can be part of this global effort. A gift of any amount to the Planetary Society helps keep this critical search going, protecting our planet and everyone on it. Visit planetary.org slash defend Earth to make your gift today.

Thank you. I didn't really fully comprehend how different the sky was in the southern hemisphere until I was literally in Australia looking up at the moon and seeing it from my perspective as upside down. But understanding that different perspective on space and the different cultures is so important. And you've acknowledged that even here in this baby book, you mention in the book that there are other cultures with different names for these constellations. So I think you're doing a wonderful job of honoring that. And it also makes me think of these beautiful little pop-out bits of information that you've seated throughout the book. They're more complex explanations of what's going on there. And I imagine that's probably for the parents who are reading along, not just so they can explain, but so that they can learn more of themselves.

Was that the intention? The editorial process for this book was almost six months long, going back and forth, making sure that the artist had put the constellations in approximately the right spot, because it's still art, right? So there's not a precision to it, but there's an accuracy to it. And then also making sure that we had call out for the moon. Like some people think the moon's in the sky all the time and if they can always see it.

Well, it's important to point out that it's not always there. And that during certain phases, you're going to see more stars because the moon can make the stars appear more dim as the sky gets more bright. And so we tried to capture those points in as few words as possible, and put them as fact boxes in the book.

How do you decide what's too advanced to include in a book like this? Because you went as far as explaining the difference between constellations and asterisms even. Yeah. Oh, well, that's easy. So I put everything I can in and my editors tell me to cut it. Yeah, the books go through quite an editorial process. So typically I use some consultants on my end, like astronomer Dave Chapman,

who is also an indigenous consultant. So he himself is not an indigenous, but he partnered with an organization called Migma Moons, which is very in tune with the different names for the things in the sky, including the names for the monthly moons, which are in indigenous culture also are reminiscent of the months

and what's happening in nature during the time of that moon. So we consult with Dave Chapman. And then they go to science consultants on the publishers end as well. And then they're editorial consultants or editors who tell us what we can and cannot include. So it's a pretty intense process. Yeah, it is.

But, I mean, worth it. You want us to be scientifically accurate and accessible enough that it can really resonate with kids. You don't want to start them from a place of incorrect information because, you know, there's so much, especially on the internet that can mislead people these days. But now that this book is in physical form, have either of you had the opportunity to actually see a baby interfacing with this book? I have. I actually just did a book signing last night at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. And it was families coming through. And so it was such a fun moment to kind of like grab the attention of. the family because the little kid or the baby they were holding just wanted to look at the book and the images in the book. And so we sold a bunch of them because the babies and the little kids

were so captivated just by the cover. And what's nice is that when John and I are together, but we sign the cover. And so it becomes not only a beautiful book, but the cover, but the cover it becomes almost like, you know, you want to put it out on display and be like, oh, an astronaut sign this, you know, and, you know, an astronomer sign this and the ability to talk about the science, the poetry and the, you know, having it rhyme and have this kind of fun meter to it. And then the art that's beautifully illustrated to come together. I've always been curious about this. Why is it that so many baby books are written in this rhyming, form. Is there something about poetry that just speaks to our brains? I think so. I think for me, I always loved like Dr. Seuss and just the rhyming part of poetry. Obviously, poetry doesn't have to rhyme, but it's always been something that I've been attracted to. And then when I won my, you know, my seat to space with the prosperity seat as an artist and a poet, the poem that I wrote

was all about rhyming and the fact that you should send a poet who knows how to rhyme and to space. And so just kind of playing off that whole literary kind of like rhythm, you know, because a lot of musicians or I should say songwriters or poets and that the way that you craft the song and how you sing to it is a lot of times got that same kind of like poetic meter or measure. And for us and our brains, you know, that those rhythms help you, I think, remember. And then, of course, if there's music involved, that also helps with the memory. And so for babies, when they're learning words and learning to speak and being able to have something that has some kind of musical kind of meet or measure to it, I think it just helps them make that connection.

Yeah. We learn better when there's an emotional connection as well. Yeah. And so, any time that you can have that one-on-one time with your child, they're going to feel that, and then they're going to feel the joy of the musical tone to the book as well. I bet you wish you had this book when your children were super young, John. It would have been so fun to read that to them. Yeah, I think if I had to had access to what I had access to later in life, I would have become, or I would have gotten my astrophysics degree, you know, right out of high school instead of waiting until I was, you know, late 30s.

What would you say to parents who have zero astronomy background whatsoever? What is the easiest way for them to begin to engage their children in space? Oh, easy. Buy this book. Yeah, no, I think just encouraging people to go to a dark sky site and look up with their family and have a dark sky experience is probably the first thing. You know, some people rush to buy a telescope, not realizing that the most fun you're going to have stargazing is just hanging out and looking up and having deep conversations. A telescope is often a catalyst for a deeper experience. So you'll look up and see Saturn, and then that'll lead you to a half-hour conversation about how amazing space travel is and how amazing it is that we've sent robots like Cassini out to Saturn.

And then you get to talk about the dragonfly mission that's up and coming to. to tighten and stuff like that, if you're knowledgeable about those things. Yeah, just getting people outside, getting them experiencing the night sky, and then having those conversations is what really solidifies these memories and these positive experiences. I feel like right now is such an important time for us to engage young people in space exploration. We're not only looking at a new era of humans returning to the moon, and hopefully in the near future, we're going to be able to see people bouncing around, up there. And hopefully the first woman and the first person of color on the moon, so more people

can see themselves reflected in that space. But we're also at this moment in the rise of commercial spaceflight. I mean, Sayan, you got to be the first woman to pilot a commercial spacecraft. And that's only going to accelerate into the future. So right now is just such an important time for us to engage young people because I can't even imagine what they're going to experience when the babies that are reading this book are adults. What kind of space future do you? Do you think they're going to be living in at that point? Well, I know the one that I hope that they're living in is a what I call Jedi space, just equitable, diverse, and inclusive space for all of humanity.

And I think that you have to kind of like actively work toward that future, if that's the one that we want to create and early access to space and going out and seeing the night sky and understanding, you know, things like space camp and, access to, you know, workforce and jobs and the things that you can do is so important. And that's why it's so much fun when you're engaging with little people and you're like, well, are you a future moonwalker or a Mars walker? And you see them thinking and they're like, you know, and then they're, and it's always

fun to see what they're going to say, you know, because some of them are like, I'm never leaving Earth, you know, but others are like, I'm off to Mars. Like, I'm going to Mars, you know? And you just want to be able to encourage wherever they are that there is a place for them in space. Whether you're doing mission control or building the rockets or, you know, doing something here on Earth versus going out and being the first to put footprints on Mars or beyond. I think that having that early on in kids' imaginations is so critical because we're, We all are like, you know, I want to be an astronaut.

And but the reality sets in by the time we're leaving high school, like, oh, that's probably not realistic of me actually becoming an astronaut. But now that's changed. I mean, if you look in just the last five years of commercial space, we flew the oldest person to space at Dwight. He was 91 years old. It was suborbital, but he went. And he had this experience.

The youngest person to go was 18. and then everything in between that. So just this wide range of people from different backgrounds, you know, the first woman from the continent of Africa. Sarah Sabre got to go. Only one woman from the continent of Africa has gone to space so far. But that's happened on the commercial side, right? And so I just love this idea of opening up access and opportunity

from anyone, from anywhere around the world. to dream that they can go and literally be bathed in Earthlight. Yeah, I think a trend we're going to see going forward are people that didn't intend to be astronauts, becoming astronauts as well. And so, you know, if we look at those two SpaceX engineers that flew on Polaris Dawn, they were, I think, spacesuit designers or something like that,

and mission designers of some sort. But then it just made sense for them within their careers to actually test the hardware for real. So, all right, go through six months of training and become astronauts now. And I think that's going to become more and more common where you'll be, oh, you're a satellite engineer on the specific piece of hardware, that piece of hardware flu,

now it needs to be repaired, now you're an astronaut now. And I think access to space is going to become so accessible that people, like I said, are going to become astronauts that didn't expect to be in the first place. And so that's something I'm really excited for. My crew member, Haley Arsenault, never thought she would go to space as a childhood cancer survivor. And can you imagine one day she got called into St. Jude, Children's Research Hospital, where she works, into the office.

And they said, hey, how would you like to go to space for three days? And she's like, okay. Yeah, there's a great part of the countdown documentary with Haley. And her instructor at SpaceX is trying to explain to her what low Earth orbit. is because she was like, oh, oh, like, are we going to the moon? I'm like, can we do that? Where can we go? Like, he's like, well, you're going to be in low Earth orbit. What does that mean? Talking to her about that experience was just so, so fascinating because, I mean, there was so much about her going to space that not only did she not

anticipate, but, I mean, being the only person to go to space with a prosthetic limb meant that there were many, many unknowns, but going through that testing, opens up doors for everyone who comes after, right? Right now, we're still celebrating first, right? The first childhood cancer survivor, the first woman to pilot a spacecraft, you know, but one of these days, it's no longer going to be a list of firsts. It's going to be just the way that it is. Yeah, I look forward to it becoming like aviation, right, where you've got people buying a ticket and they're going on this experience. And it's just the rainbow of access, right, where it's anyone from anywhere can access it at a cost that is somewhat

reasonable. You know, I think about the fact that, you know, I'm at space camp and I bring a cohort of eight community college students. And I target community college students for this opportunity because they typically don't have a lot of access to internships and things like that. And three of them had never been on a plane before, right? This is their first time. They're 18 years old, maybe 19, and they're flying to a state they'd never been to. They're eating their first meal out that they've never not with their family, right? And so they're having this like experience. And I think about how, when will we get to the point where space is like that, right?

Where you get to buy a ticket and go, you know, on an orbital flight maybe. And maybe it's a day where you orbit 48 times, well, not 48 times. You order 16 times in a day. But you can imagine that you get to go and buy a ticket and you're like, one day, you're going to go up for, or 12 hours or whatever it is. And then you come back down. And it's as easy as flying to Europe. I would love to do that so much.

I'm just, and it's not outside of the bounds of reason that someday I could experience that or that any of us could experience that. And thankfully for the ones who actually want to stay on the ground, they have other opportunities as well. Yeah, people don't realize, like, fundamentally starship, you know, SpaceX's newest rocket is a suborbital rocket, right? You have to refuel it to go any, do anything beyond that. But you look at like, you know, what opportunities is it in just that capacity

for the number of people that can go up for, you know, how many hours and then come back down, I just think, wow, that's wonderful. You know, as great as it is to go back to the moon and onto Mars, which I truly believe humans need to do, the experience of seeing our planet from low Earth orbit. And again, having that Earthlight experience is so valuable that I look forward to just those types of opportunities for people. Well, I wanted to thank you both for not only everything that you're doing,

doing just in your everyday lives, trying to share space with people. But for taking the time to really think carefully about how we can get the youngest among us into this, right? You're building the foundation of their brains at an age where they don't even have words to describe the world around them. And I would love to see what that does in 10, 15 years. I'm sure you're going to meet some of these children that read this book when they were babies and hear their experiences, and that's going to be so meaningful. I can't wait. I've had that

experience a few times teaching astronomy in California in the Oxnard School District for an organization called Space Class. I had several students come up to me, and they're like, I have your book, Kids Guide to the Night's Sky. And I was like, no kidding. And they're like, yeah, can you sign it? And I'm like, this is magical. Thank you so much. Often you don't understand the ripple effect of the things that you do. And so, you know, John and I was able to come together with the illustrator and create something beautiful and special and put it out there. And, you know, I'm excited for the ripple and seeing what happens as people and young minds develop with this knowledge. That's exciting. It is. And it's neat that in the age of social media, we do hear these stories.

like the feedback does get back to us, which is really neat as well. Just another beautiful example of our interconnected world these days. Well, Baby's Guide to the Night Sky is out now. So by the time you guys are listening to this, you can go out and pick it up for your young ones. I'm also going to leave links, not only to that book, but to all of the other resources and books and programs that we've spoken about in this episode so that you can check out more from what John Reed and Sian Proctor are doing. And thank you so much, you guys, for doing this and for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Sarah. This has been amazing. Thank you so much. Now, let's bring in someone else who knows a thing or two about writing for young minds. Dr. Bruce Betz, the Planetary Society's chief scientist. Bruce has written many science books for kids himself, and he's the one behind our night sky articles. I sent him a copy of Baby's Guide to the Night Sky ahead of time so we can get his take on it and what's up. Hey, Bruce.

Hi. Is that you pretending to be a baby? Do you need a baby's guide? Yeah, it was a pretty bad job, yeah. Or tell it to me. Oh. Okay, that's enough of that. I had so many kids' books about mostly the planets, honestly,

but it was like right after all of the images from the Voyager missions came back. So it made sense that we'd have these cool new kids' books. But I'm glad that we're finding new ways to engage young people. Because honestly, like, who would I be without that? amount of engagement in science when I was that young. I don't know who. I don't know. Not me, I guess.

But you've written a whole bunch of kids' books about astronomy. I have. You actually have one. It's similar in scope, not to this one, not Baby's Guide to the Night Sky, but to kids' Guide to the Night Sky that John Reed also wrote. Yeah. Astronomy for Kids. Yeah.

Here, obviously, the one you talked about today was for much younger kids, but mine's kind of upper elementary school, middle school. And it's like theirs, but next level up to easy ways to find constellations and stars, things to look at whether you have a telescope or not in the night sky. It was cool talking to them about it. Cyan actually had an instance where she had some young people want her to sign their books, right? And it clearly impacts people, right? Well, I sent you a copy of this book. What's your take on the way that it's laid out? And just for information, it goes like seasonally, and they did it all with like animated style.

The seasonal is nice, of course, because other than the ones near whatever pull you're in, so the northern constellations, you can get those all year round in the northern latitudes or similarly southern with the southern latitudes. But otherwise, you see certain constellations, certain times the year, because Earth orbits and our night side moves around and sees different things. So that's a great way to lay it out. But also they've brought them to life with the drawings and done things that I think makes sense for the younger crowd. Or is like older, you can go the next step and try to teach them how to find them in the sky going from one constellation to another.

But it's great. I should have just summarized. It's great. There's a dog in one of the images, a cartoon dog. And so I'm on board. But other than the constellations that are up right now, I mean, you also write our night sky articles every single month. So what are some things that people can take their families out and look at in the night sky right now that are more planetary? Planetary.

Yeah, and the night sky online, I try to really focus on what you can see just with your eyes. And so that the one thing that's changing all the time is the position of the planets because, you know, they go around. the sun. Did you know that? That's what these books help with is teaching people those things. And right now, the evening sky, we've got for a few more weeks. It's been up for a few months. So we've got super bright Venus, which is the brightest natural object in the night sky besides the moon and brighter than any of the stars. So look in the evening west. There'll be a really bright star-like object. That's Venus. And it's also hanging out roughly near Leo. which is a fairly easy constellation to identify once you know what it looks like. I'm pretty sure they've got it in their book.

Leo the Lion. We got Saturn rising in the middle of the night and then high up in the early morning and, of course, rises in the east and is kind of yellowish and a bright star, but not really, really bright. And then in the pre-dawn, you can check out Mars looking reddish, but we're still a ways away from it and our orbits that change and the distance changes significantly to Mars. And so it's not at its brightest, but it's still Saturn bright and looking reddish. So that's your pre-dawn east if you're looking there. Jupiter will be coming up getting higher in the pre-dawn east in the next few weeks.

Right now it's kind of playing with the sun and so we're not seeing it, but we'll see that. And that's also brighter than any star. And it'll be, so in a few weeks, look in the pre-dinease, you'll see a super bright object that will be either an alien spaceship or Jupiter. If it's moving fast, it's an alien spaceship. That's a joke. I'm really funny. Back to you. No, it's funny.

Like, you know, you're naming some of these objects that you would have to get the kids up at like a weird time in order to go see. But when I was maybe about six. years old, I learned that exoplanets existed. And I remember telling my mom, you know, like, I want to learn more about the night sky. I want to be an astronomer someday. And there was a night, I think it was actually during the Perseid meteor shower. We all put our sleeping bags in the backyard. And I stayed up all night long staring at the night sky. And I'm never going to forget that because it was probably the first night that I got to stay up past midnight in my entire life. Wow. That's cool. It was so cool. Yeah.

Perseid's coming around in a month or so. So mid-August, 12th, 13th peak, I believe, and the second-best shower on average per the year. And so you can get 50 to 100 meteors per hour from a dark site. You'll get fewer from other sides. So look forward to that. There are other meteor showers going all the time, but if you're not going to a really dark site,

focusing on the good ones, like the Perseides is nice. We used to go up into the foothills of the sierras and stare all night when I was a baby. No, when I was a teenager, which was kind of like being a baby. Well, I'm about to head out into the sierras just tomorrow. So I'll report back. Good knowing you, Sarah. Yep, I'm going to escape into the woods and you're never going to see me again.

She's going off the grid. I'll be screaming at Astra at the top of a mountain somewhere. All right. I think it's time for our random space fact. Random space fact. Re-wain. The sun. It is really much of our solar system. Our solar system is pretty much the sun. If you look mass-wise, the sun alone, just the sun has 99.8% of the mass of the entire solar system.

Everything else is just kind of leftover crap. That's where we live. Anyway, it's impressive. And then if you throw out the sun, you got Jupiter. And it has more mass than all the other planets combined. So it's not a very even mass distribution, but kind of cool. There you go. That is.

But also, I know I've said this a million times, but the scale of stars is just... Yeah, it's wacky. Jokey joke, astronomical. It's huge. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up the next. night sky and think about dogs and cats living together. That's hysteria.

Thank you and good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org slash shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space

through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email. Planetary Radio at planetary.org. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our online member community. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and has made possible by our members of all ages. You can join us at planetary.org slash join.

Mark Hilverta and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreyer is the host of our monthly space policy edition, and Matt Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio. And until next week. Ad Astra.