Ever seen the man who sets up a telescope at the base of Broadway and offers weekend Fells Point habitues – the tipsy, the plastered, the post-prandial, the amorous, the simply curious – a peek at the moon, stars and planets?

He’s 82-year-old Herman Heyn who’s been doing this since 1987, according to a lovely piece on him written by Ann Finkbeiner, published today in the science writers’ blog,”The Last Word on Nothing.”

Finkbeiner’s piece is more than a loving and crisply detailed portrait of a Baltimore original. It’s a paen to sidewalk astronomers throughout history – “practitioner[s] of a field that’s part epistemology, part science, and part awe. . . familiar with humankind’s abiding concerns.”