Guide Star Selection for the Three-FOV Daytime Star Sensor

Abstract

To realize the application of the star sensor in the all-day carrier platform, a three-field-of-view (three-FOV) star sensor in short-wave infrared (SWIR) band is considered. This new prototype employs new techniques that can improve the detection capability of the star sensor, when the huge size of star identification feature database becomes a big obstacle. Hence, a way to thin the guide star catalog for three-FOV daytime star sensor is studied. Firstly, an introduction of three-FOV star sensor and an example of three-FOV daytime star sensor with narrow FOV are presented. According to this model and the requirement of triangular star identification method, two constraints based on the number and the brightness of the stars in FOV are put forward for guide star selection. Then on the basis of these constraints, the improved spherical spiral method (ISSM) is proposed and the optimal number of reference points of ISSM is discussed. Finally, to demonstrate the performance of the ISSM, guide star catalogs are generated by ISSM, magnitude filter method (MFM), 1st order self-organizing guide star selection method (1st-SOPM) and the spherical spiral method (SSM), respectively. The results show that the guide star catalog generated by ISSM has the smallest size and the number and brightness characteristics of its guide stars are better than the other methods. ISSM is effective for the guide star selection in the three-FOV daytime star sensor.