Star map identification based on a modified triangle algorithm

With 486 partitions, an equal partition method of celestial sphere without overlap is firstly presented to speed up guide star indexing. And then star angular distances are directly stored according to their length increasing. The star angular distances are matched quickly by labeling status for the star angular distances. Finally, a verification identification is used to solve the redundancies of the observed star triangle and the mapped navigation star triangle. Simulation is carried out, and shows that the algorithm proposed in this paper has the advantage in terms of robustness against the star position noise and star magnitude noise. Also the identification rate and the storage requirement are improved by the algorithm, as compared with the conventional triangle algorithms.