F. Decarlo et al., DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF AN ALGORITHM FOR STAR IDENTIFICATION, POINTING, AND TRACKING-SYSTEMS, Optical engineering, 33(8), 1994, pp. 2738-2745
Software for star field identification and star pointing and tracking
is described. The software will be implemented in the guiding system o
f UVSTAR, a spectrograph/telescope system for UV astronomy and planeta
ry physics that will operate as a Hitchhiker payload on the Shuttle. T
he software work with the wide-field CCD camera and an on-board stella
r catalog. It is capable of (1) providing high accuracy (better than 2
arcsec) attitude determination from coarse (+/- 3 deg) initial knowle
dge of the pointing direction and (2) pointing toward the target. It i
s capable of tracking at the same high accuracy with a processing time
of less.than a few hundredths of a second. Simulation of observations
and various types of tests are also discussed.