Authors

• H. Sedaghat
• A. R. Toloei
• H. Ghanbarpoor

Abstract

A current method by which star trackers identify stars is to match the angles between stars within its field of view to angles stored in a catalog. If an angle can be matched to one pair of stars, the attitude of the star tracker can be determined. However, the measurement of the angle will include error, and so the true angle can only be known to lie within a certain measured range. The result is, after comparing the measured angle to the catalog of angles, more than one pair of stars can be the correct solution. A method for narrowing down to one solution involves employing many angles within the field of view in a certain order, called “pivoting,” which can be time consuming and does not always yield a solution. another method presented here matches planar triangles made from sets of three stars within the field of view to planar triangles stored within a catalog. By using both the area and polar moment properties of the planar triangle, the range of possible solutions is very quickly narrowed, fewer pivots to other planar triangles are required, and the method is more likely to yield the correct solution than the angle method. New method presented here use these two methods simultaneously, first, by angle method candidate some stars to identification. In this level reduces stars in FOV. Second, by triangle method in fewer time identification completed, because FOV is smaller. So this new method is faster than triangle and more accurate than angle method and we do not pivoting the same as each method. In addition, Simulation results show the performance of the new method as well as its robustness with respect to including false stars.

Keywords

• star identification algorithm
• triangle method
• angle method
• pivoting