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On Saturday, August 12th 2023, at the Maine State Star Party, Colin Cassie was named the Maine Astronomer of the Year. Charlie Sawyer of the Downeast Amateur Astronomers Association presented the award. Jon Silverman, of Central Maine Astronomy Society, prepared these words:

The Astronomer of the Year 2023 for the State of Maine began a lifelong love of astronomy in his youth, when an engineering intellect and Romantic curiosity about the night sky led him to build the first of his many homemade telescopes. Most of us would consider a telescope to be "homemade"‚ if we purchased optics and mounted them in a homemade tube, but Maine's Astronomer of the Year ground his own glass into superb mirrors that only became better as he perfected his craft over a lifetime.

Grinding glass and building mechanicals draws like-minded people together, so twenty-four years ago, our honoree became one of the founding members of his astronomy club, the Central Maine Astronomical Society. To this day, he has run the club's elaborate observatory. Its flagship is a huge Newtonian telescope in a dome, with an extraordinarily fine mirror that he perfected with many re-figurings over the years. To share the views from this mirror, he frequently removes it from its Newtonian tube and fastens it into its traveling Dob tube, so that he can cart it all over the State of Maine. Serious astronomers and interested lay audiences alike have admired its views at Stars Over Katahdin, the Acadia Night Sky Festival, and here at the Maine State Star Party.

The mirror of our honoree's giant Newtonian is only the most famous of his creations. He has also figured many of the smaller mirrors in regular use at his club, yet not all of his contributions involve fabricating mirrors. The complex geometry of the tube for his club's rare, new Trischiefspiegler telescope is built to his carefully engineered specifications. Beyond telescopes, the Astronomer of the Year has created astronomers by being an inspiration to us all. We marvel at his ease and fluidity in pointing telescopes at any object in the sky, and want for our skills to become more like his.

The gifts of his presence have reached far beyond his own club. He is a regular visitor to the Southern Maine Astronomers. He has long served as a Subject Matter Expert at University of Maine, where he leads students of astronomy through their first observations. Wanting to assure that future generations will have the same opportunities to observe as we have had, he was a co-founder of Dark Sky Maine.

Knowing that telescopes need occasional maintenance that, historically, has been expensive and has exposed valuable mirrors to the risks of shipment, Maine's Astronomer of the Year studied and perfected a new method for coating mirrors with simple equipment and real silver, at low cost. The Astronomer of the Year is about to lead us in a demonstration of this magical re-silvering process, right now.

By the unanimous decision of the presidents of all of Maine's astronomy clubs, the Maine State Star Party is pleased to name a true gentleman, philosopher, teacher, engineer, mirror-maker, and friend to all as Maine's Astronomer of the Year for 2023. For his lifetime of service to astronomy, together we raise a heartfelt thanks and a round of applause to this year's inductee, Colin Caissie!