The feasibility study of Barus city as the new astrotourism destination from astronomical and meteorological aspect

Abstract

Astrotourism is a tourist activity that shows attractions in the form of astronomical phenomena and outer space. Astrotourism activities that can be carried out by tourists are such as studying and exploring astronomical phenomena such as eclipses, meteor showers, and so on in the conditions of the night sky. An important condition for the advancement of astrotourism in an area is that the area has dark skies that are characterized by no severe light pollution and had adequate atmospheric conditions such as at least clouds covering the sky so that celestial objects can be observed properly, temperature, humidity, wind speed. and good rainfall so that visitors or tourists can comfortably be at astronomical tourist sites for a long time. We’ve done collecting atmospheric data using portable weather station and sky brightness data using Unihedron Sky Quality Meter LU-DL type device from July 10th - 11th 2021 and we collected data from windy.com for atmospheric particle content and cloud coverage during those dates. The results showed that Barus can become a new potential astrotourism destination specifically in Northern Sumatera or broadly in Indonesia where the Light pollution in Barus city is quite low, with a maximum value of brightness sky of 21.6, 20.8, and 21.8 MPSAS for the east, zenith, and west directions, respectively; Atmospheric conditions are quite good with an average temperature of 25.9 °C, the humidity of 89.2%, wind speed of 2.07 km/h, rainfall of 33.1 mm, amount of particles in the atmosphere 0.13 AOD and heat index of 27.2 °C Future study is needed from other aspects to make Barus become a new astrotourism destination in Indonesia.