AstroTourism: What The Heck Is That? Why Are Mainers Talking About It?
Traveling to a place because of its darkness, that is called astro-tourism. For many of us who live in Maine, where we still have real darkness at night, we see the stars. Even living in the middle of Augusta, I have some nice star gazing at night, but, it is not like that for everyone.
Many areas just have too much light because of urban environments and air pollution around major metropolitan areas, so a get-a-way where there is little to no artificial light to disrupt the star gazing is appealing to many. A star-gazing au-natural experience.
So now many place are even working to preserve their darkness calling it a "dark sky preserves".
Maine is one of those places. According to the Portland Press Herald, Maine has the largest area that is free of light pollution in the eastern half of the United States. In fact, Maine is one of the very few places that you can find 'pristine skies' in a story from the Portland Press Herald.
You don’t need to be a wizard to figure out that this has economic possibilities for ….astro-tourism. People have come to Vacation Land from around the United States...THE WORLD... to see the night sky as it was meant to be seen. But with COVID-19 slowing things down for travel right now it might be the perfect time for you to do astro-tourism thing yourself...maybe even a trip to someplace out of the way to really see the night sky. I did that out on Cobbossee recently and it was magical.
In fact, the Katahdin Woods and Waters is listed on the International Dark-Sky Association, the only locations on the International Dark-Sky interactive map in the northeast United States. Sweet!
And that, my friend, is far-out! (See what I did there?)