| Name: | Description: | Size: | Format: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.26 MB | Adobe PDF |
Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Wind farm lights are a conspicuous feature in the nocturnal landscape. Their presence is a source of light pollution for residents and the environment, severely disrupting in some places the aesthetic, cultural, and scientific values of the pristine starry skies. In this work we present a simple model for quantifying the visual impact of individual wind turbine lights, based on the comparison of their brightness with the brightness of well- known night sky objects. The model includes atmospheric and visual variables, and for typical parameters it shows that medium-intensity turbine lights can be brighter than Venus up to ~4 km from the turbine, brighter than CMa (the brightest star on the nighttime sky) until about ~10 km, and reach the standard stellar visibility limit for the unaided eye (m v =+6.00) at ~38 km. These results suggest that the visual range of wind farms at nighttime may be significantly larger than at daytime, a factor that should be taken into account in environmental impact assessments.
Description
Keywords
Light pollution Wind farms Nocturnal landscape Environmental impacts assessment Naked eye astronomy Atmospheric extinction
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Bará, S., & C․ Lima, R. (2024). Quantifying the visual impact of wind farm lights on the nocturnal landscape. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 329, 109203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2024.109203
Publisher
Elsevier