Jakarta Globe – AFP, Andrew Beatty, Dec 07, 2014
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| Active regions on the sun combine to look something like a jack-o-lantern's face, as pictured in this image provided by NASA on Oct. 8, 2014. In addition to the Namib desert, Hawaii and Chile have become renowned as astro-tourism hot spots, according to AFP. (Reuters Photo/NASA/Handout) |
The Namib
Desert, Namibia. Not many tourist spots boast of being dark and difficult to
get to, but the Namib desert is one of a number of remote “Dark Sky Reserves”
drawing in stargazers for a celestial safari.
In the cool
night air, an urbane Austrian tourist climbs rocky steps behind a chic hotel
lodge and peers into a matte-black metal cylinder containing a spine of mirrors
and lenses that reveal the universe.
“My mum
wanted to set him on fire yesterday when he said, ‘We are looking ten million
years in the past!’” he joked, pointing at the resident astronomer.
Not
everyone is ready to face the enormity of the universe laid out so starkly by
powerful magnification and the crisp desert sky.
But across
the starkly beautiful Namib, hotels and lodges are betting that the stars will
lead to more business rather than a spike in Galileo-esque witch hunts.
Many lodges
have bought research-grade or “prosumer” telescopes and hired live-in
astronomers as they try to lure tourists who want to gaze deeper into space and
time.
According
to consultancy Euromonitor, astro-tourism holidays are growing in line with
increased urbanization, with Africa in particular “taking off”.
“Most
people come here for the other activities, visiting the dunes or the nature
reserve where you see all the wildlife. This is kind of a bonus,” said Misha
Vickas, formerly a guide at a public observatory in Sydney, but now resident at
the AndBeyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge.
“Most
people have never looked through a telescope and a lot of them have just never
looked up.”
Vickas
operates a “go-to” telescope, a device which, once calibrated, pivots on demand
to any star or planet with little more than a mechanical hum and whir.
Not that a
telescope is really needed in the Namib.
Across as
much as 50 percent of the Earth the starry firmament is obscured by an orange
glow of man-made light pollution.
During the
day, the Namib’s sea of copper red and ecru yellow dunes and mountains glow
blindingly, befitting the world’s oldest desert.
But in the
inky night sky, the Milky Way seems much closer than Windhoek, a half day’s
drive away across dirt track and sun-rippled single-lane carriageway.
Mars’s red
glow, Magellanic clouds — dwarf galaxies outside our own — and assorted gaseous
nebulae are all visible with the naked eye.
“The sky is
particularly good to look at here, because the Milky Way, which is the main
part of our galaxy, is usually very high overhead,” meaning light refraction is
at a minimum, Vickas said.
“There is a
lot to look at.”
Darkest
places on earth
In 2012, a
sliver of the central Namib the size of Mauritius — the NamibRand — was named
Africa’s first “Dark Sky Reserve,” in recognition of the sky’s special allure
here.
A handful
of similar sites exist across the world, including Aoraki Mackenzie on New
Zealand’s South Island and the Iveragh Peninsula on Ireland’s southwest coast.
Hawaii and
Chile have also become renowned as astro-tourism hot spots.
“The
darkest places are almost inevitably distant from populated places,” said John
Barentine of the Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association, which awards
the designation.
“The glow
of cities can often be seen several hundred kilometers away under good
conditions.”
To rank sky
quality, scientists use measurements like the Bortle scale.
An inner
city is level nine, meaning you can see very little. Bright constellations like
Orion may be faint or even invisible.
At the
other end of the scale, in a first-class sky like the Namib, Venus and Jupiter
shine bright, a white swathe of zodiacal light smears the sky.
Like parts
of Chile, the Namib’s good weather and ultra-dry atmosphere make for clear
nights and particularly transparent air all the way to the horizon.
“A visitor
to NamibRand has a statistically high probability of experiencing that
exceptionally dark sky on any given night,” Barentine said.
Namibia has
just over two million people spread over an area roughly the size of Pakistan
or Nigeria, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the
world.
“NamibRand
is located in one of the darkest accessible places that remain on Earth,” said
Barentine.
“It is as
close as you get to the way the world was long ago, before the invention and
proliferation of artificial lights.”
That may be
the only thing this remote region is close to — thankfully for stargazing
tourists.
Agence France-Presse
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