Astrotourism

Michael Marlin

Description

This book explores the growth of the astrotourism, identifies star seeker trends, how the stars have shaped civilizations, and the budding space tourism industry.

In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed our connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.

This book explores the growth of the astrotourism, identifies star seeker trends, how the stars have shaped civilizations, and the budding space tourism industry. Learn ways to develop a destination, find customers, and our relationship with the night sky. Meteor storms, eclipses, auroras, and other celestial phenomena have lured travelers for years and here the author expands the field of astrotourism with the inclusion of astronomical clocks, megaliths, and sundials, which track the movement of the stars.

Sujets

• Astronomie
• Astrophysique
• Science
• Astronomy
• Sciences et techniques
• Space Science

Informations

• Publié par: Business Expert Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781637420676
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Astrotourism
Astrotourism
Star Gazers, Eclipse Chasers, and the Dark Sky Movement
Michael Marlin
Astrotourism: Star Gazers, Eclipse Chasers, and the Dark Sky Movement
Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.
Edited by Cindy Hartman
Cover design by G.Brad Lewis/volcanoman.com
Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published in 2021 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-066-9 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-067-6 (e-book)
Business Expert Press Tourism and Hospitality Management Collection
Collection ISSN: 2375-9623 (print)
Collection ISSN: 2375-9631 (electronic)
First edition: 2021
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to the committed champions of our dark skies, whose gaze of conviction goes past the horizon. Their actions protect and preserve one of our planet’s remarkable features, its view of eternity and the sparkling stars that lure us there.
Description
In the span of a single lifetime, light pollution from Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) has severed our connection with the stars that we’ve had since the dawn of time. With the nocturnal biosphere significantly altered, light’s anthropogenic influence has compelled millions of people to seek out the last remaining dark skies.
This book explores the growth of the astrotourism, identifies star seeker trends, how the stars have shaped civilizations, and the budding space tourism industry. Learn ways to develop a destination, find customers, and our relationship with the night sky. Meteor storms, eclipses, auroras, and other celestial phenomena have lured travelers for years and here the author expands the field of astrotourism with the inclusion of astronomical clocks, megaliths, and sundials, which track the movement of the stars.
Keywords
astrotourism; space tourism; tourism; astronomy; astronomy tourism; astronomical; eco-tourism; green tourism; sustainable tourism; star gazing; eclipse chasing; star tourism; dark sky; astrotourist; solar eclipse; aurora borealis; constellations; ALAN; artificial light at night; light pollution; skyglow; meteors; full moon; 2024 eclipse; Great America Eclipse
Contents
Preface
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Defining Astrotourism
Chapter 2 Our Link to the Stars
Chapter 3 Star Seeker Trends
Chapter 4 The Present and Future Astrotourist
Chapter 5 Where–When–What
Chapter 6 Space Tourism
Chapter 7 Eclipse Chasers
Chapter 8 Ancient Monuments to the Stars
Chapter 9 Sundials and Astronomical Clocks
Chapter 10 Tours
Chapter 11 ALAN and Health
Chapter 12 Sharing the Stars With Your Guests
Chapter 13 Developing a Destination
Chapter 14 In Closing
Case Studies
Music List
Notes
References
About the Author
Index
Preface
It was a clear Hawaiian night, and it was possible to walk up to the very edge of an active lava flow on the slopes of Kilauea—the blood of the earth exposed to the air, its intense heat briefly glowing then rapidly cooling to become dark stone. People would ask me, “How close can you get?” My response was always, “How far can you put your head into an oven?” Watching people transfixed by the light in the dark, it dawned on me that all life is drawn to light and the whole world would want to see a show about that. That thought was a pivotal moment in my history.
A few years earlier, I had quit a 15-year career as a highly successful stage performer. I had pioneered a genre, becoming the first comedy talking juggler in the history of Las Vegas. A video of me can still be found on YouTube, doing my shtick on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert in 1977. I appeared on national TV in the U.S. and across Europe, performed with ballet companies and orchestras, headlined comedy clubs, filling every bucket available for a juggler. You are only as old as your act—and I didn’t want to grow old doing my act—so I left my career, society, and civilization. I ended up in the jungles of the Big Island in Hawaii, where I built and lived in a treehouse without electricity for five years.
After the glaring lights of LA and Las Vegas, the darkness of night was soothing to my soul. It was on these Hawaiian nights, the stars sweeping overhead from one horizon to the other, that I felt connected to something more eternal than my name on a marquee for a week. It was in this darkness, my face hot from the lava, that a seed was planted for the sapling of a new idea. The tree I had been living in had served its purpose, and it was time for me to come down out of it.
I returned to civilization and the performing arts to raise awareness of the loss of our night skies due to light pollution. Entertainment spreads faster and is consumed more enthusiastically than educational programs and with this in mind, I created a show that was performed in a darkened theater, with unseen performers creating moving tapestries of light and color. My goal was to create the same sense of wonder I felt when looking at a night sky.
My brainchild, LUMA: Theater of Light and Art in Darkness, performed across generations and around the world. In 1987, light pollution was a fringe topic that was not on peoples’ radar. Thirty-plus years later, light pollution has become a driver in the travel market. It is time for those who still live under a starry night sky to learn how to capture the imagination of travelers, lovers of the night, and what we now call, astrotourists.
My journey has come full circle, and rather than inviting people into a theater, this book is an invitation to journey out into the evening’s shadow to experience the awe, amazement, and majesty that is everybody’s birthright: a view of the heavens. A dark sky is a free resource that needs little to capitalize on. If you are a tour guide, hotelier, outfitter, resort manager, or anyone whose place of business or residence can be found under a dark sky—and you do not take advantage—then, “The fault….lies not within the stars, but in ourselves.”
Foreword
Early April in Alaska is barely beyond winter, yet I stood patiently with my father and a group of other avid astronomers, waiting to look through the telescope eyepiece at the dusty streak of a comet passing through our solar system. It was 1997, and the comet Hale-Bopp was near its closest point to the sun and earth on its 2,533-year orbit. Seeing Hale-Bopp was my first and earliest memory of discovering the wonders of the night sky; I’ve since been fortunate to build a career focused on experiencing astronomy first-hand and sharing my experiences as a resource for others. But for most of my career, I wasn’t aware that there was a formal name for the type of tourism I was participating in and promoting—astrotourism—and it dates back to almost the beginning of civilization.
For the entirety of human history, our lives have been shaped by astronomical phenomena. This has both a biological basis and a cultural one; for this reason we have strong evidence about the power of light to affect human sleep/wake cycles as well as millennia-old monuments which mark the dance of the moon and sun across the sky throughout each year. Despite the fact that groups of humans warmed themselves around a fire each night to keep the darkness and cold at bay, it has only been in the last two centuries that our capabilities have truly managed to push the night away.
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is one of the great plagues of the 21st century, though many people might not know about it—or even understand how it impacts us. This is demonstrated poignantly in an anecdote within these pages about the power of seeing the night sky demonstrated through the film Soylent Green . We’re missing something due to ALAN, but we don’t even know what we’re missing until we see the pristine night sky above us, awash in starlight and moonlight.
Thanks to the double-edged sword of the ubiquity of media on the internet, the tide is slowly changing, as more people travel to seek out the night sky, share their experience, and become ambassadors for its protection. For every beautiful Milky Way photo we see posted on Instagram, there are thousands of users who are exposed and begin to wonder how they can see the same with their own eyes. The concept of astrotourism—traveling to experience the wonder of the night sky or learn more about astronomy and space science—is spreading, and represents an opportunity for destinations and businesses that can serve that interest.
To that end, Astrotourism: Star Gazers, Eclipse Chasers and the Astronomical Rise of the Dark Sky Movement presents an invaluable resource to those in the astrotourism industry (whether they are aware of being in the industry or not). Certainly operators offering night sky tours and destinations which have (or are near) locales that have received dark sky designation status are actively and avidly courting astrotourists and the financial impact they bring to local economies. But many more opportunities still exist for businesses and destinations that are as yet unaware of the power of the astrotourist