Yaoke Xue

A modified star map identification method suitable for astronomical camera

High accuracy star map identification results are the basis of astronomical positioning. The traditional triangle star identification algorithm has a higher redundancy and a poor robustness to noise. Considering the specific requirements of the star map identification of the astronomical camera, in allusion to this default, proceeding with selection of guide stars, construction of guide star catalogue and realization of matching algorithm, a modified triangle algorithm based on traditional one is presented. With the proposed algorithm, the guide star is selected from astronomical durchmusterung. In order to speed up guide star indexing, the guide star catalogue is founded after dividing the sky using the overlapping rectangle method. The guide star sub-catalogue is constructed by the radius of guide triangle circumcircle and the two sides of guide triangle. The characteristic radius is used for indexing and sorted in an ascending order to improve the searching efficiency in the processing of star map identification. The matching scope of the angular distance is narrowed and the matching rate of angular distance is improved by the matching of the characteristics radius. If there exists redundancy, a normalized magnitude is used to eliminate it. Within the observing area of the real sky, the 1050 star maps continuously are calculated. The simulation results show that, the identification rate of this algorithm is greater than 97. 83% when the noise of position error is two pixels, and the average identification time is about 25. 07ms. Compared with the traditional triangle algorithm, this modified algorithm has a couple of advantages, including the smaller storage capacity of guide star catalogue, better robustness to position and magnitude error, higher rate of correcting star map identification and lower redundancy.

Optical system design with wide field of view and high resolution based on monocentric multi-scale construction

With the development of related technology gradually mature in the field of optoelectronic information, it is a great demand to design an optical system with high resolution and wide field of view(FOV). However, as it is illustrated in conventional Applied Optics, there is a contradiction between these two characteristics. Namely, the FOV and imaging resolution are limited by each other. Here, based on the study of typical wide-FOV optical system design, we propose the monocentric multi-scale system design method to solve this problem. Consisting of a concentric spherical lens and a series of micro-lens array, this system has effective improvement on its imaging quality. As an example, we designed a typical imaging system, which has a focal length of 35mm and a instantaneous field angle of 14.7”, as well as the FOV set to be 120°. By analyzing the imaging quality, we demonstrate that in different FOV, all the values of MTF at 200lp/mm are higher than 0.4 when the sampling frequency of the Nyquist is 200lp/mm, which shows a good accordance with our design.

Optical design of a distributed zoom concentric multiscale meteorological instrument

A meteorological moderate resolution sensor requires large field of view (FOV) and low distortion imaging. At present, a fixed-focus camera combined with a whiskbroom scanning mechanism or a fixed-focus multi-camera combined with pushbroom scanning mechanism is being used. Owing to the fixed focal length of the camera, a large FOV causes the difference of imaging distance and ground imaging angle between the nadir point and the edge of the FOV to be significantly large, resulting in a large difference in the resolution between the nadir point and the edge of the FOV. The study proposes to simultaneously adopt a distributed zoom concentric multiscale system to realize a large FOV, low distortion, and high quality imaging to coordinate with different compensation lenses to achieve a different FOV corresponding to different focal lengths, where the resolution drop between the nadir point and the edge of the FOV is reduced. To ensure the same illumination of the entire FOV, the entire system possesses the same F# with different FOVs exhibiting different entrance pupil diameters. The study analyzes the principle of aberration compensation of a concentric multiscale system when both the FOV and entrance pupil diameter are changed and completes three groups of optical design of different focal lengths with uniform F#. The results indicate that the system has advantages of low distortion and high imaging quality in the entire FOV. Moreover, the resolution drop in the entire FOV is reduced to approximately 50% of the traditional design scheme. To verify the implementability of the system, a set of prototype manufacturing and imaging experiments are conducted to prove that the system has satisfactory implementability, and the imaging quality is also satisfactory.

Optical system design of lunar rover navigation camera

The optical system of lunar rover navigation camera has a direct influence on imaging quality, and an indirect influence on the programming of march forward of lunar rover. One type of lunar rover navigation camera optical system with the symmetrical structure was introduced. It also set up the suitable position of stop to achieve the relative distortion lower than 0.053 percent under the 60 degrees wide field-of-view. It applied the hyperfocal distance principle to achieve the clear imaging from 0.5 meter to infinity. The modulation transfer function is close to diffraction limit at the Nyquist frequency (at standard object distance). Considering the complicate environment of lunar surface and the demand of exploration, it selected the appropriate work spectral coverage and was cooperated by the irradiation reinforce. As a result, it can bear 1×104Rad (Si) space irradiation and is capable of keeping working normally in the severe environment with its temperature varying from-60°C to + 90°C.

Influence of atmospheric turbulence on detecting performance of all-day star sensor

All-day star sensor makes it possible to observe stars in all-day time in the atmosphere. But the detecting performance is influenced by atmospheric turbulence. According to the characteristic of turbulence in long-exposure model, the modulation transfer function, point spread function and encircled power of the imaging system have been analyzed. Combined with typical star sensor optical system, the signal to noise ratio and the detectable stellar magnitude limit affected by turbulence have been calculated. The result shows the ratio of aperture diameter to atmospheric coherence length is main basis for the evaluation of the impact of turbulence. In condition of medium turbulence in day time, signal to noise ratio of the star sensor with diameter 120mm will drop about 4dB at most in typical work environment, and the detectable stellar limit will drop 1 magnitude.All-day star sensor makes it possible to observe stars in all-day time in the atmosphere . But the detecting performance is influenced by atmospheric turbulence . According to the characteristic of turbulence in long-exposure model, the modulation transfer function, point spread function and encircled power of the imaging system have been analyzed. Combined with typical star sensor optical system, the signal to noise ratio and the detectable stellar magnitude limit affected by turbulence have been calculated. The result shows the ratio of aperture diameter to atmospheric coherence length is main basis for the evaluation of the impact of turbulence . In condition of medium turbulence in day time, signal to noise ratio of the star sensor with diameter 120mm will drop about 4dB at most in typical work environment, and the detectable stellar limit will drop 1 magnitude.

Optical design for large depth of field

Optical system with large depth of field and large field of view has been designed. To enforce optical system with focal length of 6 mm to imaging the object with object length of 200mmm-1200mm, accord to the equation of depth of field, in case of the CCD sensor with pixel of 5.5umx 5.5um square area, the entrance pupil diameter to ideal imaging will be 0.423mm. To enlarge the modulation transfer function (MTF) at spatial frequency of 90 lp/mm, the entrance pupil diameter is enlarged to 1mm.After design and optimization, with field of view of 80°, within object length of 200mm - 1200mm, the optical system can imaging well, the modulation transfer function (MTF) at spatial frequency of 90lp/mm is larger than 0.1, the distortion of full field of viewed is less than 3%.The optical system can be widely used in machine vision, surveillance cameras, etc.

Method Used to Test the Imaging Consistency of Binocular Camera's Left-right Optical System

To binocular camera, the consistency of optical parameters of the left and the right optical system is an important factor that will influence the overall imaging consistency. In conventional testing procedure of optical system, there lacks specifications suitable for evaluating imaging consistency. In this paper, considering the special requirements of binocular optical imaging system, a method used to measure the imaging consistency of binocular camera is presented. Based on this method, a measurement system which is composed of an integrating sphere, a rotary table and a CMOS camera has been established. First, let the left and the right optical system capture images in normal exposure time under the same condition. Second, a contour image is obtained based on the multiple threshold segmentation result and the boundary is determined using the slope of contour lines near the pseudo-contour line. Third, the constraint of gray level based on the corresponding coordinates of left-right images is established and the imaging consistency could be evaluated through standard deviation σ of the imaging grayscale difference D (x, y) between the left and right optical system. The experiments demonstrate that the method is suitable for carrying out the imaging consistency testing for binocular camera. When the standard deviation 3σ distribution of imaging gray difference D (x, y) between the left and right optical system of the binocular camera does not exceed 5%, it is believed that the design requirements have been achieved. This method could be used effectively and paves the way for the imaging consistency testing of the binocular camera.

Optical technologies for space sensor

Space sensors are used in navigation sensor fields. The sun, the earth, the moon and other planets are used as frame of reference to obtain stellar position coordinates, and then to control the attitude of an aircraft. Being the “eyes” of the space sensors, Optical sensor system makes images of the infinite far stars and other celestial bodies. It directly affects measurement accuracy of the space sensor, indirectly affecting the data updating rate. Star sensor technology is the pilot for Space sensors. At present more and more attention is paid on all-day star sensor technology. By day and night measurements of the stars, the aircraft’s attitude in the inertial coordinate system can be provided. Facing the requirements of ultra-high-precision, large field of view, wide spectral range, long life and high reliability, multi-functional optical system, we integration, integration optical sensors will be future space technology trends. In the meantime, optical technologies for space-sensitive research leads to the development of ultra-precision optical processing, optical and precision test machine alignment technology. It also promotes the development of long-life optical materials and applications. We have achieved such absolute distortion better than ±1um, Space life of at least 15years of space-sensitive optical system.