Neil deGrasse Tyson draws crowd of 1,000 to presidential museum

Marcus King, a 9-year-old from Belleville, got a surprise Friday when he was selected to ask astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson a question during an event at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum.

Tyson invited Marcus up on stage, picked him up and sat him on top of the lectern in front of a crowd of about 1,000 people. The boy asked Tyson what inspired him to become an astrophysicist, and the scientist then explained that when he was young, his parents took him to museums, planetariums, art galleries and other sites to let him see how interesting the world can be.

"It was kind of scary, but I eventually got over it," Marcus said afterward. "It was really, really exciting. I thought I was going to fall off the podium, though."

Tyson directs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and served as executive science editor, host and narrator for "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey," which ran on the Fox network and won four Emmy awards. He is also the latest recipient of the annual Lincoln Leadership Prize, which is awarded by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation.

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