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At an age when most people are retiring, Herman Heyn, 77, discovered his calling. "I had many different jobs, never had a career in one, though," Heyn said. "I worked in sales, as a lab technician, at Pratt Library two years through a 'Great Society' program of Lyndon Johnson's that trained local people to work in public venues. "The longest job I ever had was 12 years as a office manager and truck driver for a small construction company." But if you go to Baltimore's Inner Harbor on a clear night this fall, you'll likely find the spry, gray-bearded "street corner astronomer" pointing out Jupiter's moons, Mars, or the rings around Saturn to wide-eyed children, tourists, and, once, to an MIT planetary scientist. "I got interested in astronomy at Garrison Junior High in Northwest Baltimore -- Mrs. Wicker's eighth-grade general science class," Heyn said. "She drew the Big Dipper on the blackboard and told us that night to go look for it in the sky. And I did. I did my homework and I was hooked." That was in 1944. "After the war, when you could start buying those kind of things again, I leaned on my father until he bought me a 3-inch refracting telescope," he said. Heyn, who lives in the Baltimore rowhouse neighborhood of Waverly, eventually earned a degree in elementary education from Coppin State and tried classroom teaching, but wasn't successful. "I could never remember students' names," he said, still slightly embarrassed by the admission. "And to be a good teacher, you have to remember the kids' names." Astronomy remained a back yard hobby for a long time, but later he began taking public astronomy demonstrations to schools and local groups. Heyn recounted his story as he pulled his 42-pound, metallic-blue telescope, purchased in 1981 for $1,300, from a silver trunk. It looked initially like something Homeland Security should be concerned about, but by the time he had it set up on his tripod, curious onlookers began to hover. Jugglers, a singer, break-dancers, a snake handler and a clarinet player competed at Inner Harbor for his $1 suggested donations, yet his line remained filled. "Is it real?" asked Marwa Abdelsadelsaddig, 7, who was visiting Baltimore from Sudan with her family, as she peered at a perfect, tiny, nearly vertical ring looping around Saturn. "Can you see it?" she asked her dad. Then, tugging at him, she asked again, "Is it real?" "She has an atlas at home -- she is very smart, very interested in science and the planets," boasted her father, Mohammed. He and his family had never been to Baltimore and were visiting relatives. He added that he and his daughter had never seen the rest of the solar system, either. "You never know what you are going to see when you travel,' Mohammed Abdelsadelsaddig said. Heyn gave fact sheets about the planets to interested observers and copies of a New York Times story about astronomer Carolyn Porco to awe-struck young girls like Marwa. He maintained a steady banter about the position of the planets, listening and engaging customers in lively dialogue. "It took me a while, but I realized I like being onstage," Heyn said. However, it took a 2-year court fight, launched in 1990, before he was allowed to ply his trade at the Harbor Place. "The Rouse Company is in charge of everything that happens there, even though it is public property," he said, noting the annual spring auditions for performers. "And they didn't want anything to do with me. They didn't know what to make of me." The Maryland Lawyers for the Arts took his case, filing a First Admendment suit on his behalf in federal court. By the end, though, Heyn was representing himself. "When the opportunity finally came, I requested a jury trial and they settled. They gave me $2,000. And a place to work." Now, they waive his audition. Heyn takes his science, not just his act, seriously. He's tentatively been credited with identifying a previously unnamed asterism -- a pattern created by bright stars and a subset of a larger constellation. Heyn's asterism, "Herman's Cross," is a large four-star configuration in the constellation Sagittarius. So far, it's recognized by two websites, including the site of astronomy software company Bisque. Early in his "new" career, in 1994, in the aftermath of the much-anticipated collision of the Shoemaker-Levy Comet into Jupiter, Heyn learned serendipitously that MIT planetary scientist Heidi Hammel, leading the Hubble Space Telescope Team's work nearby the Johns Hopkins' Homewood campus, had snuck a peek through his "street corner" telescope. "I didn't know who she was when she stopped by," Heyn said. "I heard about it later listening to National Public Radio." Hammel told NPR that she and friends had gone to the Inner Harbor for dinner and afterwards, walking near the water, stumbled upon a local fellow showing off the marks the comet had just left on Jupiter from its recent crash. "She said she and her friends got in line and paid a dollar for a look," Heyn recounted. "She called it the most meaningful and memorable experience of the whole thing for her. She said she'd been looking at the digital images and photographs sent back by the Hubble, but that was the first time she actually looked directly at Jupiter and saw the black marks with her own eyes." Not long after the Shoemaker-Levy Comet, Heyn reconnected with his former teacher, Mrs. Wicker, who read an interview he'd done with The (Baltimore) Sun. She was in her 80s and living in a retirement home in Catonsville, and phoned her former student, whom she hadn't seen in 50 years. "I went, visited her and had lunch, and we stayed in contact until she passed away earlier this year at age 93," Heyn counted. "I'm grateful to her. I always told everyone that asked I got my start in astronomy in Mrs. Wicker's eighth-grade class. "It doesn't matter how many thousands of times since that I've looked at Jupiter, Mars, Saturn's rings, the mountains on the moon or the Big Dipper," Heyn said. "They always look beautiful to me."
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