26 December 2020 Guide star catalog generation of star sensors for interstellar navigation
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Abstract

In interstellar travel, parallax and stellar aberration have a non-negligible influence on the star identification of star sensors. Through the analysis of the working principle of star sensors, only the guide star catalog generation can solve this problem. The influence mechanism of parallax and stellar aberration is synthetically analyzed by four-dimensional time-space diagrams, and a generation algorithm of the guide star catalog for the interstellar star identification is presented. The update cycle of the catalog is studied, and a block update method based on the distance distribution is given. The Hipparcos catalog is adopted as the fundamental catalog. On the premise of meeting the accuracy requirement of star identification, the maximum travel distance supported by the catalog is about 0.3 light-years. In order to balance the star identification and the influence of parallax, eliminating 30% to 40% of the nearby guide stars is an optimal criterion for the guide star selection. The analysis of the catalog distribution shows that the parallax and the stellar aberration have opposite effects on the distribution of guide stars. The methods and conclusions provide a theoretical basis for interstellar celestial navigation.

© 2020 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2329-4124/2020/$28.00 © 2020 SPIE
Liang Wu "Guide star catalog generation of star sensors for interstellar navigation," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 6(4), 044006 (26 December 2020). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.6.4.044006
Received: 8 May 2020; Accepted: 9 December 2020; Published: 26 December 2020
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CITATIONS
Cited by 3 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Stars

Star sensors

Space operations

Sun

Navigation systems

Astronomy

Homogenization

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