The City of Fredericksburg received its designation as a Dark Sky Community in 2020. The requirements to do so included having a quality comprehensive lighting code, community commitment to dark skies and quality lighting, community commitment to dark skies and education, success in light pollution control, and a sky brightness measurement program.
Dark Sky monitoring equipment was installed on the roof of the Club House at Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Golf Course. The equipment and the monitoring computer were all donated by Ken Kattner and the Putman Mountain Observatory. Information is collected after the sun begins to set. Data is read every five minutes and then every fifteen minutes. Those data points are then averaged so that there are four readings per hour. All this data is uploaded to and can be viewed at http://putmanmountainobservatory.com/hill-country-dark-sky-monitors/. More information about Dark Sky monitoring, can be found at http://putmanmountainobservatory.com/sky-quality-monitoring/.
In Texas thus far, the only Dark Sky Communities are Dripping Springs, Horseshoe Bay, Wimberley Valley, and Lakewood Village, however, many others are also in the process of joining including Llano, Mason, and Blanco. There are only 35 Dark Sky Communities in the world with the majority (25) being in the United States.
