Factors affecting the development of Astro-Tourism Destinations

This study aims to find the Astro-Tourism potentials and to identify the strategies required for development of this kind of tourism in Iran. The research method which is used in this survey is different regarding different aims we are looking for. It is functional according to the purpose, field study according to the control degree and measurement and descriptive according to the data collecting strategy. Therefore, the method is descriptive-analytic which the required data has been collected and analyzed by distributing the questionnaire and observation. Subsequently, inferential statistics including factor analysis has been used to achieve the aim of this research. The samples of this research were 206 persons were choices from amateurs, professionals and especially tourism experts in sky/star observation tours that were selected by Judgmental sampling. The data and methods of achieving descriptive and inferential statistics, including factor analysis using SPSS software were used. In this study, the questionnaire was composed of total of 35 variables. While considering these variables and ranking them, 7 factors identified by factor analysis. These factors involve 5/00 development infrastructure, 4/18 professional astronomy infrastructure, 3/88 ecological and geographical area/zone, 2/61 physical infrastructure of tourism, 2/43 safety and security, 2/00 preparing particular observing situation, 1/97 recreational tourism infrastructure.