TOWARD GROUND-BASED AUTONOMOUS TELESCOPE ATTITUDE ESTIMATION USING REAL TIME STAR PATTERN RECOGNITION

摘要

This paper introduces a technique that helps amateur astronomers to reduce the problems of initial alignment of the telescope by using the most recent techniques (centroiding, star identification, and attitude estimation) developed for autonomous navigation using star trackers. This has been accomplished by using off-the-shelf components and, in particular, a smart digital camera. The integration of the digital camera with the finder scope of a standard telescope has been outlined and the extension to hand-held computers has been investigated. By this integration the problem of star recognition becomes feasible and enjoyable not only by the amateur astronomer community but also by a much larger audience. The key problems description has been given, and a prototype system analyzed in detail.