Star tracker

The STARS real-time star tracking software operates on an image from EBEX 2012, a high-altitude balloon-borne cosmology experiment launched from Antarctica on 2012-12-29

A star tracker is an optical device that measures the position(s) of star(s) using photocell(s) or a camera. As the positions of many stars have been measured by astronomers to a high degree of accuracy, a star tracker on a satellite or spacecraft may be used to determine the orientation (or attitude) of the spacecraft. In order to do this, the star tracker must capture an image of the stars, measure their apparent position in the reference frame of the spacecraft, and identify the stars so their position can be compared with the absolute position of the stars in a star catalogue. A star tracker usually includes a processor to identify stars by comparing the pattern of observed stars with the known pattern of stars in the sky.

Many models are currently available. Star trackers, which require high sensitivity, may become confused by sunlight reflected from the spacecraft, or by exhaust gas plumes from the spacecraft thrusters (either sunlight reflection or contamination of the star tracker window). Star trackers are also susceptible to a variety of errors (low spatial frequency, high spatial frequency, temporal, ...) in addition to a variety of optical sources of error (spherical aberration, chromatic aberration, etc.). There are also many potential sources of confusion for the star identification algorithm (planets, comets, supernovae, the bimodal character of the point spread function for adjacent stars, other nearby satellites, point-source light pollution from large cities on Earth, ...). There are roughly 57 bright navigational stars in common use. However, for more complex missions, entire star field databases are used to determine spacecraft orientation. A typical star catalog for high-fidelity attitude determination is originated from a standard base catalog (for example from the United States Naval Observatory) and then filtered to remove problematic stars, for example due to apparent magnitude variability, color index uncertainty, or a location within the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram implying unreliability. These types of star catalogs can have thousands of stars stored in memory on board the spacecraft, or else processed using tools at the ground station and then uploaded.

See also

• Celestial navigation
• GoTo (telescopes)