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Does any one have any experience imaging under the canopy of red tower lights flooding the night sky? I ask this as my observatory may very well indeed fall prey to the installation of a Wind Turbine farm. These turbines are going to be constructed a little over 1 km from my obs. I am wondering what effect the flashing red lights may have on my ability to continue to image. It is presently a 4 -5 on the Bortle Scale. I 'd love to hear from you if you are subject to this... Thanks Bob  |
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| I don't know for sure, but I would be surprised if flashing red lights 1 km away would create a major problem for your overall light pollution situation, unless those towers would be located high enough to be in front of your targets. What cardinal direction are they going to be located in? Red light in general doesn't impact imaging nearly as much as white LED lights, and I'm imaging next to two LED street lights. Broadband is still quite possible under Bortle 7 skies, so even if they raised your LP situation to Bortle 6 (very doubtful), you'd still have a far better situation than many of us have. If I were in your situation, I'd definitely be annoyed, but I don't think I'd be worried. |
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Thanks Chris, They will be SE and S from my Observatory. There are 21 planned that are 684" tall on top of the mountain putting them at 2300' above sea level. My obs is at 1279' above sea level. All turbines will have 2 high intensity red strobes on them will will make for a wall of light about 5km long. In addition they are required to blink in unison synchronized to within 1/20 of a second. I know of another location where the is a line of turbines which I can see that is 37 km away and they shine like you are right next to them. Also another concern is what kind of atmospheric turbulence are these going to create? Bob |
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Ouch - okay, then I would be a little worried about southern targets. This might be difficult to gauge at this moment, but how high in degrees would that be roughly? The reason I'm asking is that if that's only 20-25° high, it shouldn't make too much of an impact, as I find imaging targets below about 35° is usually too much atmosphere to shoot through anyway to get a decent result and shooting 10° higher *should* be enough distance (fingers crossed?). I was also imagining that the intensity would be similar to radio towers we have around here, which is extremely weak. I've also imaged a few times within a few km of a smattering of wind turbines and they haven't had any impact, but that's not a wind farm by any means. I doubt they themselves would create a great deal of atmospheric turbulence - any turbulence would already be there from the wind present, right? |
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| I would think of them as a giant fan..Think of sitting in front of a fan...there could be a breeze but when you turn on the fan it creates a wind vortex thus blowing air on you. I have been able to image low on the horizon to the S with fairly good results but these will change the declination drastically that I will be able to image. The horizon was just above this mountain top . |
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| Right, but they're not doing the blowing, they're being blown by the wind already there. They move, but since they're not producing the wind, I'd imagine they'd act more like stationary buildings than giant fans. That's not to say they wouldn't have any impact. Walk downtown any city surrounded by skyscrapers and you'll definitely feel that wind vortex... But I think (hope?) the impact in that regard wouldn't be too drastic. |
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| Probably won't make much difference. In my previous observatory location, a neighbor, 30 yards away, shined every night a pair of bright white porch lights directly over my dome. They will not cause problems to you if you shade the lights from your telescope. |
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We are just north of a wind farm on Amherst Island, Ontario -- there are three less than 800 meters away from my observatory. If I attempt to image anything below 20 degrees there is the possibility that the blades will leave a smear on my images. Its an interesting effect... another wasted evening. They have recently turned on the tower flashers -- so two sets of bright LEDs on each tower, plus the flashing beacons on the nacelle. And two doors to the east we have a neighbor who uses an airport light to mark their driveway. I image with a 6" RC and a 61mm refractor with a very deep shade. As long as I am a few degrees above any of these light sources or between them it doesn't seem to hurt much. Any local backscatter just adds to the background gradient that I clean up with PixInsight. We do get ground fogs and these sources of scatter combined with all the lights just shut my imaging down. Dew is usually pretty heavy then as well. I have been using OSC and am just dipping my toe into narrowband. Night sky SQM runs between a moonlit low of 19 and a much better 21 otherwise. I tend to work south and east -- there is a brightly lit cement plant and gas plant under construction to the west (the white city..) and the light dome of Kingston, ON is to the northeast. Comparing what I get locally with my iTelescope images -- allowing for the equipment differences they do not seem that different. Locally, clouds are a much larger problem. greg latiak |
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| Thank You Greg! |
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I am imaging between two wind farms, also under a sky of between bortle 4 and 5. One wind farm is located in a distance of about 1,5 miles, the other one is around 3 miles away. During the last year, both were doubled in size from around 10 to 20 big fans each. I can't really distinguish the influence of that from the overall light pollution situation. According to what I read, LP is annually increasing between 3 and 6 percent in Germany. Light pollution maps do illustrate that in a pretty scary way. But from the practical side I can say that four years ago my possibilities were limited when it came to separating dark dust nebulae from the background sky - and that hasn't changed noticably since the wind farms were enlarged. CS (and DS) Basti |
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Thanks Basti...So far we (the residents) are still fighting the wind farm proposal. Keeping our fingers crossed that the courts rule in our favor! Question, do you know if property values have decreased since the turbines went in? CS(and DS)...I like that! Bob |
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No, as far as I know property values haven't decreased. But the fans are built between the single small towns and villages on fields of farmers who get compensation or rent for the permission to build on their land. And the distance to the closest neighborhood is still about one half mile. Therefore only astrophotographers (which are a rare species around here) suffer. But I think in german society there is a widespread consensus that everybody prefers wind energy to fossile or nuclear power so most people take the aesthetic disadvantages as the price they have to pay for that. So CSDS ;-) and good luck for the fight Basti |
