Meet the Board of Directors

Wayne Gosnell

Wayne Gosnell is the founder and current President of the Blanco County Friends of the Night Sky. He is a retired United States Army Colonel and an Aggie, but he also holds a Ph.D. from that school in Austin, the one with the big orange tower.

In the Army, Wayne specialized in international political-military relations. Following retirement from the Army, he and his wife, Martha, did two years of missionary work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Southern Mexico. He later worked for five years in Bosnia and Herzegovina helping that country recover from war.

Having grown up in the West Texas oil fields back when the skies were still incredible out there, Wayne is passionate about preserving the night sky. Although he is fascinated by astronomy, that is not his primary motivation. He is simply awestruck by a pristine night sky. He comments that looking at the stars through a light polluted night sky is like driving through a beautiful forest with a dirty windshield.

At night sky preservation presentations, he is often heard to say, “Of all the forms of pollution mankind has foisted on the Earth, light pollution is the easiest and cheapest to fix,” and it can be done in our own lifetime.

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