In 1989 I happened on a couple of books by William K. Hartman and Ron Miller, most importantly one called Cycles of Fire, which told the story of the grand cosmic cycle star formation and synthesis of elements and how those elements have been blown back out into space and the process starts over again and how we fit into this whole sort of cosmic recycling program. The book was beautifully illustrated, and it just really gripped me.

So I said to myself, "Well, I live in New York City, so I'm not really going to be able to see anything in the sky—which is what most people think—so I read a few more books, and I read a lot about the Orion Nebula, which is the closest star formation region to us in the galaxy—about 1500 light years away—and I looked at a lot of photographs of it and I learned where it is in the sky. And then I was walking down the street, up in my neighborhood in Washington Heights, on 169th Street one winter night, and I happened to look up, and I recognized the constellation Orion, from having seen so many pictures of it! And I said, "Oh my God, I can see the constellation Orion!" And I ran upstairs, got my binoculars, came back downstairs, and there it was! The Orion Nebula, from 169th Street, in spite of all the street lights and everything!! I was really hooked!

I joined the Amateur Astronomers Association, when I found out about them, and I started going to their observing sessions in Carl Shurz Park, and after a while, my girlfriend spotted a telescope in a store, and she said, "That telescope would be perfect for you!" and she talked me into buying it. And when they constructed the new Rose Center, they began to recruit a group of volunteer Explainers for the Center. As soon as I heard about that, I knew I had to be a part of it.

The single craziest question I've ever been asked ... a woman in her 30's—she was quite earnest; she wasn't kidding—she asked me, "When the astronauts go into space in their space shuttle, how do they avoid bumping into the stars? There are so many stars up there, how do they find their way around them?" She had no idea—and a great many people have no idea—the distances involved and what the stars are and the fact that the sun is a star. Even the fact that the Earth goes around the sun! A National Science Foundation survey a few years ago, showed that 27% of American adults still think the sun goes around the Earth!

When I'm out in a really dark sky and I'm alone and it's just me and the universe, it's really like I'm out there, cruising through the galaxy. Which is really what we're doing! I mean, the sun and its planets are like a space ship cruising through the galaxy, and I can really feel that when I'm out there under a really dark sky with the universe all around me. It's like I'm sitting at this really big picture window on the observation deck of a space ship, looking at the scenery.

But more philosophically, some people say that the universe makes them feel insignificant. I don't feel that way. I feel that it makes us very significant. Because what we're looking at, all around us in the universe, is the creation process. This grand, cosmic, recycling program is the process which created us, and we are going to go back into the system, and new worlds are going to be created from our atoms. So the universe created us, and through our eyes and our brains, it can look at itself and appreciate itself. That makes us very significant!