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 α CMa (the brightest star on the nighttime sky) until about ∼10 km, and reach the standard stellar visibility limit for the unaided eye (mv = +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.

中文翻译：

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量化风电场灯光对夜间景观的视觉影响


风电场灯是夜间景观中的一个显着特征。它们的存在是居民和环境的光污染源，在一些地方严重破坏了原始星空的美学、文化和科学价值。在这项工作中，我们提出了一个简单的模型，基于它们的亮度与众所周知的夜空物体的亮度的比较，量化单个风力涡轮机灯的视觉影响。该模型包括大气和可见变量，对于典型参数，它表明中等强度涡轮灯在距离涡轮机约 4 公里处可能比金星更亮，在大约 ∼10 公里处比 α CMa（夜空中最亮的恒星）更亮，并在 ∼38 公里处达到肉眼的标准恒星能见度极限 （mv = +6.00）。这些结果表明，风电场在夜间的视野范围可能明显大于白天，这是环境影响评估中应考虑的一个因素。