Vojvodina and Bács-Kiskun Night Sky as a Novel Touristic Attraction

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Two neighbouring lands of Vojvodina (SRB) and Bács-Kiskun (HUN) have an excellent, hidden benefit of the low light pollution. As its consequence, the clear nights show beautiful, dark sky background, and opportunity of enjoying thousands of stars dow n to the faintest ones. This unpaired opportunity has not been utilized by anyone before. The team of the Science Faculty of Novi Sad University and Baja Observatory Foundation started to work on the development of some tourism-oriented activity pack age several years ago. After obtaining many experience about several different forms of astronomical demonstrations, planetarium presentations, observing camps, guided night walks to some extremely dark areas – these two cooperating organizations ela borated a concrete joint plan for forming real touristical attraction over this cross-border land, also widening the interest of general people of all age-groups, especially families, about the starry sky. The main attraction is the beautiful starry sky, as it can be seen here as neither in the larger cities nor the smaller ones. This land has the largest number of clear nights per year in Hungary and Serbia, too. The other meteorological conditions are also supporting this idea. One part of the project aims to carry astronomical roadshows by a newly developed mobile observatory around the territory of the project (even in the smallest villages, where the people have no time to frequently visit distant planetaria and starry parks). Another part of the project aims for a fixed-location observing site in the heart of the darkest area of this territory. Moreover, this will be the end point of an unprecedental 1:455 million Scaled Solar System bicycle tour. The starting point of this route will be the renovated previous public observatory of Baja – as a new Visitor Center, having exhibition hall, a small lecture hall, and planetarium. Here the interested tourists can get spectacular astronomy show even during cloudy days.

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