Dean chats with John Read, an astronomer, YouTuber, and author of the popular 50 Things to See With a Telescope series. Listen in to learn how John got his start as an amateur stargazer and how you can get started studying the night skies today!
From John's website:
John A. Read’s journey into astronomy began with a small and rickety telescope purchased at his local pharmacy. He found it fascinating to observe the Moon and Saturn with its rings using such meagre equipment. He decided to share these views with others by writing his first book, "50 Things to See with a Small Telescope," an easy-to-understand beginner’s guide which he self-published and sold through Amazon starting in 2013.
Since then, he has written a number of other books on space for children including 50 Things to See on the Moon (Formac Publishing)—50 Animals That Have Been to Space, which he co-wrote with his wife Jennifer Read, and 50 Space Missions That Changed the World. In 2021, he released 110 Things to See with a Telescope co-authored with astronomer Chris Vaughan. John works as a telescope operator at the Burke-Gaffney Observatory.
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- SeeStar S50 Adventure - Exploring "Scenery Mode" at Peggy's Cove
- How To See The Moon with a Telescope
- The Race For Space 1959 Documentary
- William Shatner Reflects on Space Flight Experience
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: Astronomers just make great authors, don't they? I mean, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. People who are drawn to exploration and discovery, who have the patience and perseverance to study the sky. Yeah, that sounds exactly like the kind of person it would take to write a giant entire book about space!
Today, we'll learn more about the writing, publishing process from a businessman turned astronomer who is way happier doing astronomy now and teaching beginners about space. From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is Looking Up, a show
that takes you deep into the cosmos, or just to the telescope in your backyard, to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great. Our guest this week is John Read, master's student at Johns Hopkins University in Space Systems Engineering. Host of Learn to Stargaze on YouTube and the author of the Things to See with a Telescope series.
So I gotta admit, I always like talking to people who maybe made like a career change in their life. They, they, they start off doing one thing and then they found like their calling somewhere else because that's pretty much what happened to me.
I really thought that I was going to be a teacher of some sort. I went to school to become a high school history teacher. And so I went through college and then I did my high school teaching and I did my student teaching. And then I was like, you know, I don't think I want to be a high school history teacher.
This is not this is challenging. So I found astronomy much later in my life. Welcome to stargazers. I'm Dean Regas outreach astronomer from the Cincinnati observatory. This kind of happened to me by accident. I was working for the Cincinnati parks, doing nature education, you know, drifting through my post college life, trying to figure out what I was going to do.
And I was. Showing people fossils and trees and birds and that kind of stuff. And, and then one day you had to learn to work the planetarium. They had this little planetarium at the nature center and they've said, you know, Dean, you got to learn how to use it because you're going to be giving shows. And this is one of those things that was like, it just happened.
I, I had no idea that I would love astronomy. I had no real background in it. I had no real, you know, experiences. I didn't really look through telescopes when I was a kid. And so here I was mid twenties in charge of a planetarium, not even knowing where the North star was. Oh man, it was intimidating, but. I fell in love with the subject.
It was just one of those things. I just dove right in and I learned everything. Everything about astronomy, stars, planets, the moon, all sorts of stuff. And it just became this passion of mine. This is the thing that happens about astronomy. I gotta warn people that are listening to this, this podcast. Once you get in astronomy, it gets a hold of you.
It's over. It's over, man. You become part of this thing. And so this is what happened. It was, you know, my whole life did a whole, I wouldn't say 180 cause I'm still teaching, but it turned quite a bit to where now I became like man of the stars.
Okay. That might be exaggerating just a little bit, but. By changing careers by changing ideas, then you're also not quite sure where you fit in or what your professional status is.
So I hear this a lot with, with people in the sciences and, and in education also is that they're not exactly sure what to call themselves. And I have to admit for the first five, maybe even 10 years of my job it was hard for me to call myself an astronomer. I didn't, I couldn't look at it the same way.
You know, because I didn't go to school for it. I hadn't researched. I hadn't discovered any comets or anything like that. So how do you call yourself an astronomer? And so I had this kind of complex, maybe not a big complex, but at least a little complex about this. So I remember a big turning point as I went to this conference with these other planetarium people.
And it kind of came up in one of the discussion groups. And I remember this so specifically, even though I can't remember the person's name, but it was a planetarium director from the Cleveland area. If you know who you are, you're awesome. Because you said to me, you said, Dean, what do you get paid to do?
And I said, astronomy. He's like, so you're an astronomer. I was like, yeah, but I didn't get a degrees. Look in the room. None of us got degrees in astronomy. And I was like. Yeah, I guess so and you guys are pretty cool It was like, this is what you do. You, you aren't who you are from what you went to school for.
It's you, who you are from what you do and your actions and that kind of thing. And it really made a big impact into me. And, and I kind of relaxed a little bit about it. I was like, yeah, I'm doing this. Yeah.
John Read: So I'm John Read. I'm host of learn to stargaze on YouTube and author of the things to see with a telescope series.
Dean Regas: Well, thanks, John, for doing this. This is wonderful.
John Read: Thanks for having me, Dean.
Dean Regas: So take us back to the beginning, the early days, your fascination with astronomy. What kind of sparked your initial interest and, you know, how did it kind of like evolve over time?
John Read: So I never really discovered astronomy until I was 27 years old, which is pretty late for us, most astronomers, because at that point, most of them are done grad school by then. I was actually living in California. I lived outside of San Francisco, and I had gone to a CVS pharmacy. And there they had this tiny telescope for 13.
99. About 50 millimeters in diameter, maybe a focal length of 700 millimeters. So I took the telescope out, and I pointed at the moon one night. You know, some stars, but then one day, I took the telescope out, in front of our apartment complex, right beside the BART line, that's the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, there were trains going by, the light pollution was terrible, but there was this little yellow star, and I was like, well that's interesting, maybe I'll point this telescope at that star, and so I did, and there was just enough magnification That really small, in the field of view, was Saturn.
And it must have been a really clear night, because although it was small, the rings were crisp, and I could see the color, and I could see the little black spot between the rings and the planet.
And from that point on, I knew that astronomy was going to be a big part of my life.
And so I went on Craigslist, which is like, Facebook marketplace of the early 2000s, and I got a bigger telescope at that time, a 60 millimeter telescope, which is not very big, but that got me started. That got me going through the Messier objects. It got me looking at the other planets like Jupiter and Venus.
And then a year later. I ended up getting a 12 inch Dubsonian for Christmas. And at that point, I was like, I'm seeing it all. So I started working through the Messier list, and I joined the Astronomy Club, which was a really important part of the growth in my astronomy career. And at that point, I started volunteering almost every night, four or five times a week, with the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society.
They have an outreach group. We would go to the different schools, middle schools, and high schools, and elementary schools, and we would teach people how to use these telescopes. From there, I, I was always interested in, what more can I see? So I started developing these lists, 10 of the best items per season.
From that point on, I ended up putting it together in a book, which I really just wrote for me. And so I had this book, 50 Things to See with a Telescope, and I would use this for my outreach events. Ultimately, I, I realized that, you know, maybe this book might help some other people too. And so I figured out how to put the book on Amazon.
Now it wasn't very good. But the feedback I got was, was really positive. And I realized it was helping quite a lot of people. And so I redid the book. And again, this is just self published. I made my own cover in Microsoft word, but it turns out that it helped a lot of people. So, so we improved the book over the next couple of years, every year, I made it a little bit better.
And then ultimately I was able to derive enough revenue that I realized that if I devoted my. Full time to astronomy that I could probably make a career out of it. So I left my job and We moved to Canada where I could afford to get an astrophysics degree and and the rest is history we've since we're on book 16 and 17 right now and So it's been a long it's been a long journey about you know, 10 or 11 years in the process.
But here we are.
Dean Regas: And it all started with that very inexpensive telescope. Now, John, that hurts a little bit because that's the thing we always tell people. Don't buy a cheap telescope. You're going to get frustrated and quit the job. But you powered through. How did you power through such a terrible telescope?
John Read: Yeah, well, I strongly believe in small wins. And so, if you look at my YouTube channel, I did a lot of videos earlier on, just how to use any telescope.
[John's YouTube Channel]: In this video, we'll observe the telescope. If you're new to telescopes, it's by far the best way to get familiar with the telescope.
John Read: So let's, let's work with what you've got.
Because we ultimately want to, want to get people those wins, so that they get the itch, so that they really fall in love with the hobby. Because it's such a fulfilling hobby. It's a stress reliever. It gets you in touch with nature. You see the beauty of the night sky for what it really is. And this is visual astronomy I'm talking about.
And then people, when they really get hooked, they turn into astrophotography, which is an entirely different hobby altogether. And it's also much harder on your wallet.
Dean Regas: Yeah, I mean, I joke because I started on a really bad telescope to I had this four and a half inch reflector on a terrible mount. And then you're like, okay, I can put up with this terrible telescope, but I'm going to learn how to use it.
And in some ways, I think that made it even better. Astronomers, I think you might have noticed, are patient people in some ways. Is that kind of what you feel as well?
John Read: Yeah, the hobby does take a lot of patience and, and there's a lot to learn too. Learning even how to look through an eyepiece could be a challenge for a lot of people and learning how to see deep sky objects is a big hurdle.
So, learning how to see galaxies, learning what's important, And maybe what's not as important, for example, like one of the most important things in seeing deep sky and expanding the array of the things that you've been able to observe is the darkness of your skies. And I think people underestimate that, you know, you can see more with binoculars from a national park, then you can with, you know, 100, 000 telescope at a university observatory sometimes, and it's just because of the importance of dark skies.
Dean Regas: So what would you tell somebody who lives like in the heart of a city and still wants to do some stargazing?
John Read: If you live in the heart of the city, there is still a lot you can see. So for about half the month, the moon is in the sky, and so you should definitely observe the moon. And we even have a book, 50 Things to See on the Moon, you should check that out.
That'll keep you busy for quite some time. You can also see the planets. You can see the phases of Venus. You can see the rings of Saturn. You can see Jupiter, its cloud belts, its red spot, given the right conditions, and you can see the four Galilean moons. From the city, you can also see some bright star clusters like the Beehive or the Summer Beehive.
Open clusters, so large groups of stars in one place. You can even see some globular clusters, so those are groups of hundreds of thousands of stars that are located tens of thousands of light years away. So even from the city, they're fairly faint, but you can pick them out. Globular clusters include M13, M5, M3, M2, and M22.
So if you plug those into your stargazing app, you can see those from the city with a telescope, of course. And you can, you should be able to pick them out. They're quite dim, but you can see them.
Dean Regas: So what were some of the challenges you faced like in, in kind of translating your knowledge and passion for astronomy into this easy to understand beginner's guide?
John Read: I think the thing that was challenging for me as a beginner stargazer was finding things in the sky. A lot of these stargazing apps that we have, they really oversell what you're realistically able to see, and they also don't do a really good job accounting for light pollution, which makes a lot of these objects invisible from the city.
So, what I was able to do with the books is after I had gone out and observed everything, and I was doing all my observing from, you know, about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco, I had a pretty good idea of what you could see and what you could not see. The challenge was designing these star maps that were easy enough for anyone to just open up To any page in the book and the books organized by season.
So you open up by season and then look up into the sky, find the constellations and then find the deep sky object within. So that was sort of my process. Can I open the book to any page? Can we easily find the constellation and then given a telescope or a small telescope? Can you find the object getting that right?
I think was the big challenge with the book.
Dean Regas: Well, I gotta say I first became aware of your writing when my publisher for my book said hey Did you see John Read's books on Amazon? I was like, no, they look amazing. They're great and even publishers are noticing this I just wanted to let you know that yeah.
John Read: Yeah, so in about 2017 that's when the publishers really started noticing So at first we went with a local publisher, and they're pretty small, they're mostly Canada, and so we, we wrote five books for them, which was really great.
So my wife and I did 50 animals that have been to space, where we looked at just really getting, getting over some of the misconceptions that people have about animals in space. And I think that really took that, that knowledge to the next level. For example, like, what was the first animal in space? Do you know?
Dean Regas: Well you know, we always go with Laika as the the main dog, but I think you're gonna tell me something different.
[Archival Audio]: Meantime, the Soviet Union was ready to launch its second punch in a row, Sputnik 2. Aboard this new satellite, Laika was to be the Earth's first traveler into space.
John Read: Yeah, so Laika was actually the ninth dog in space. So Laika was the first dog to orbit. And several of the earlier dogs also survived, whereas Laika did not.
So, animals have been going into space for long before we've been in orbit. So, when the Soviet Union collapsed [Ed. note: please see correction above], and Germany lost World War II, all of these rockets were left over from the war. These V2 rockets, and those rockets actually went into space. They went above the Kármán line, above 100 kilometers in altitude.
The U. S. military started testing them down in New Mexico, and the first animals to fly in one of those rockets and to cross that 100 kilometer threshold were fruit flies.
Dean Regas: Oh man!
John Read: Yeah! I think they even sent goldfish and hamsters and, and all sorts of crazy stuff. But the only information we have about it are these spreadsheets.
And each line in the spreadsheet represents a rocket launch. And then in a small note, it said what was on the rocket. And if you go through those lists, that's where you see fruit flies, goldfish, all the all sorts of little critters.
Dean Regas: And way before William Shatner, way before that.
John Read: Way, way before. Yeah.
[William Shatner reflecting on flight]: This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin.
Dean Regas: So looking ahead, what aspirations do you have for the future of your journey in astronomy, science communication? Are there some specific projects or goals that you have that you're really excited about?
John Read: So my biggest goal is Stargaze Nova Scotia.
[John's YouTube Channel]: Alright, so our first stop is Stargaze Nova Scotia. I've got the sea star here.
It is a beautiful day.
John Read: So my wife and I purchased 26 acres of land near a big tourist destination in Nova Scotia called Peggy's Cove.
[John's YouTube Channel]: Stargazing plateaus. We're gonna move over so that we have a view of the lake.
John Read: We're at Bortle 3, Bortle 4 skies so that means the skies are quite dark. When you get out of your car at Stargate Nova Scotia, you look up and you will see the Milky Way rising out from the horizon to above your head and over your head.
I'll have telescopes set up there for people to use. We'll have roll off roof observatories for those who are doing visual observing. We'll have domed observatories for people that want to do astrophotography. Looking over the next few years, we'll have lodging. We're on a lake, so you can take a canoe out during the day.
We'll have a walk the solar system trail so you can walk the solar system out to scale with your family. And so that's, that's our big project right now is making Stargaze Nova Scotia a reality and a destination for those on the East Coast that love the night sky.
Dean Regas: Or hopefully for the Midwest too. I mean, that sounds pretty great to me. I've been to Peggy's Cove a very long time ago. It's a beautiful area that is such a cool idea to set up. So yeah you got a place for me? Can I come visit?
John Read: Absolutely. We're working on these little huts that have an observatory and a little bunkie in the same building. Just little you know, a hundred square foot buildings for people to camp in with the telescope.
Dean Regas: Wow. Well, this has been awesome, John. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge, your passion for this. Keep the books coming. They're a great idea and yeah, I love talking with you about this.
John Read: Yeah, this is fantastic, Dean. Thanks for having me on the show.
Dean Regas: So I was thinking maybe I should give you all a homework assignment since you've heard an author and we've talked to another author. And so I'm going to give you an author type assignment. Now, I guess I'm going to give you more of my school teacher as a homework assignment, and that is. I want you to think about a topic or subject that you're really, really passionate about.
Something that maybe is part of your job, maybe part of your career, maybe part of your studies, or maybe not. Maybe something that's completely different. Try to describe it, that passion. Try to describe that subject to a beginner in as simple way as possible. This could be a friend, a friend, family member, something like that.
Or email us, send us your passion about any subjects or maybe even topics of things we want to cover in the future. And you can email us at looking up@wvxu.org. Looking up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio. Kevin Reynolds and I created it a few years ago. Ella Rowen is our show producer.
Marshall Verbsky assists with audio production, editing, and swears he can see his house from the pale blue dot picture. That's a big house. Jenell Walton is our Vice President of Content. Ronny Salerno is our Digital Platforms Manager. And Brittany Mayti is our Social Media Coordinator. Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran.
And our cover art is by Nicole Chance. Keep looking up!
