‘Looking Up’: Exploring Night Skies and Astro-Tourist Sensory Experiences

Abstract

What appears an eternal and unchanging night sky, many of the stars that sparkle have already died. Yet, when we look up, a transcendental astral experience awaits us as our senses attempt to capture our ethereal existence. However, exploring stargazing within the visitor economy and the ‘astro-tourist’ experience that draws upon sensory perceptions has hitherto been neglected. The aim of our conceptual chapter, therefore, is to address this gap within scholarship and to offer a theoretical blueprint that identifies the nature of astro-tourism and the parameters of astro-tourist experiences. This includes the significance of the senses and its interplay with spirituality, as well as dynamic placemaking between outer-space embodiment and existentialism. We argue astro-tourism relies less on physical places but on placelessness and specific sensory dimensions. Indeed, looking up at the night sky includes a tri-partite relationship between the dark, space, and the senses. It is these sensorial aspects that give significance to the astro-tourist experience and its out-of-this-world sensory-scape. In turn, by ‘looking up’ at the night sky and all its celestial wonders, it offers us an embodied tourist experience which can awaken a certain reverence, but the stars will forever remain inaccessible.