Rigorous and integrated self-calibration model for a large-field-of-view camera using a star image

This paper proposes a novel self-calibration method for a large-FoV(Field-of-View)camera using a real star image.First,based on the classic equisolid-angle projection model and polynomial distortion model,the inclination of the optical axis is thoroughly considered with respect to the image plane,and a rigorous imaging model including 8 unknown intrinsic parameters is built.Second,the basic calibration equation based on star vector observations is presented.Third,the partial derivative expressions of all 11 camera parameters for linearizing the calibration equation are deduced in detail,and an iterative solution using the least squares method is given.Furtherly,simulation experiment is designed,results of which shows the new model has a better performance than the old model.At last,three experiments were conducted at night in central China and 671 valid star images were collected.The results indicate that the new method obtains a mean magnitude of reprojection error of 0.251 pixels at a 120°FoV,which improves the calibration accuracy by 38.6%compared with the old calibration model(not considering the inclination of the optical axis).When the FoV drops below 20°,the mean magnitude of the reprojection error decreases to 0.15 pixels for both the new model and the old model.Since stars instead of manual control points are used,the new method can realize self-calibration,which might be significant for the long-duration navigation of vehicles in some unfamiliar or extreme environments,such as those of Mars or Earth’s moon.

Automatic removal of false image stars in disk-resolved images of the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem

Taking a large number of images,the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem(ISS)has been routinely used in astrometry.In ISS images,disk-resolved objects often lead to false detection of stars that disturb the camera pointing correction.The aim of this study was to develop an automated processing method to remove the false image stars in disk-resolved objects in ISS images.The method included the following steps:extracting edges,segmenting boundary arcs,fitting circles and excluding false image stars.The proposed method was tested using 200 ISS images.Preliminary experimental results show that it can remove the false image stars in more than 95%of ISS images with disk-resolved objects in a fully automatic manner,i.e.,outperforming the traditional circle detection based on Circular Hough Transform(CHT)by 17%.In addition,its speed is more than twice as fast as that of the CHT method.It is also more robust(no manual parameter tuning is needed)when compared with CHT.The proposed method was also applied to a set of ISS images of Rhea to eliminate the mismatch in pointing correction in automatic procedure.Experiment results showed that the precision of final astrometry results can be improve by roughly 2 times that of automatic procedure without the method.It proved that the proposed method is helpful in the astrometry of ISS images in a fully automatic manner.

Wavelet Analysis of Space Solar Telescope Images

The scientific satellite SST (Space Solar Telescope) is an important research project strongly supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Every day, SST acquires 50 GB of data (after processing) but only 10GB can be transmitted to the ground because of limited time of satellite passage and limited channel volume. Therefore, the data must be compressed before transmission. Wavelets analysis is a new technique developed over the last 10 years, with great potential of application. We start with a brief introduction to the essential principles of wavelet analysis, and then describe the main idea of embedded zerotree wavelet coding, used for compressing the SST images. The results show that this coding is adequate for the job.

A study of the global magnetic activity of the star Kepler-17 using light curve inversion with bipartite regularization

A new method of light curve inversion with bipartite regularization(LIBR),which is complementary to the previous treatments by Bonomo and Lanza and Estrela and Valio,is used to reconstruct the physical properties of star spots on the solar-type star Kepler-17 by using the full Q1-Q17 data set.The Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC)method was applied to find the best profile of the reconstructed surface.The known value of the rotation inclination of Kepler-17 allows the generation of a star spot model in a sequence of stellar rotation with a period of 12.26 d.Because of the nature of the light curve inversion,the spot model is limited to the equatorial region.We also investigated the starspot lifetimes of Kepler-17 utilizing the MCMC method.Combined with the LIBR inversion results,it was found that the star spots typically last from one to several stellar rotations.From the time evolution of the spot size,a magnetic cycle period of 437 d can be derived.This value is comparatively shorter than the solar cycle which might be a consequence of the younger age(~1.78 Gyr)of Kepler-17.The light curve of Kepler-17 is characterized by the presence of large-amplitude variation caused by star spots but no superflare activity.An interesting possibility is that the magnetic energy stored in the star spot regions could have been constantly dissipated by electrodynamic interaction between the central star and the hot Jupiter,Kepler-17 b,via a lower-level energy release process.

How to co-add images? I. A new iterative method for image reconstruction of dithered observations

By employing the previous Voronoi approach and replacing its nearest neighbor approx- imation with Drizzle in iterative signal extraction, we develop a fast iterative Drizzle algorithm, namedfiDrizzle, to reconstruct the underlying band-limited image from undersampled dithered frames. Compared with the existing iDrizzle, the new algorithm improves rate of convergence and accelerates the computational speed. Moreover, under the same conditions （e.g. the same number of dithers and iterations）, fiDrizzle can make a better quality reconstruction than iDrizzle, due to the newly discov- ered High Sampling caused Decelerating Convergence （HSDC） effect in the iterative signal extraction process.fiDrizzle demonstrates its powerful ability to perform image deconvolution from undersampled dithers.

Ghost Images in Schmidt CCD Photometry

The wide field of the Schmidt telescope implies a greater chance of the field containing bright objects, and the presence of a corrector lens produces a certain type of ghost images. We summarize and confirm the features of such ghost images in Schmidt CCD photometry. The ghost images could be star-like under special observational conditions. The zenith distance of the telescope, among other factors, is found to correlate with different patterns of the ghost images. Some relevant issues are discussed and possible applications of our results are suggested.

Portable adaptive optics for exoplanet imaging

The portable adaptive optics(PAO)device is a low-cost and compact system,designed for 4-meter class telescopes that have no adaptive optics(AO)system,because of the physical space limitation at the Nasmyth or Cassegrain focus and the historically high cost of conventional AO.The initial scientific observations of the PAO are focused on the direct imaging of exoplanets and sub-stellar companions.This paper discusses the concept of PAO and the associated high-contrast imaging performance in our recent observational runs.PAO deliver a Strehl ratio better than 60%in H band under median seeing conditions of 1".Combined with our dedicated image rotation and subtraction(IRS)technique and the optimized IRS(O-IRS)algorithm,the averaged contrast ratio for a 5≤V_(mag)≤9 primary star is 1.3×10^(-5)and3.3×10^(-6)at angular distance of 0.36"with exposure time of 7 minutes and 2 hours,respectively.PAO has successfully revealed the known exoplanet ofκAnd b in our recent observation with the 3.5-meter ARC telescope at Apache Point Observatory.We have performed the associated astrometry and photometry analysis of the recoveredκAnd b planet,which gives a projected separation of 0.98"±0.05",a position angle of 51.1°±0.5°and a mass of 10.15_(-1.255)^(+2.19) MJup.These results demonstrate that PAO can be used for direct imaging of exoplanets with medium-sized telescopes.

Temperature Analysis of Flaring(AR 11283)and Non-flaring(AR 12194)Coronal Loops

Here,we study the temperature structure of flaring and non-flaring coronal loops,using extracted loops from images taken in six extreme ultraviolet channels recorded by Atmospheric Imaging Assembly/Solar Dynamics Observatory.We use data for loops of an X2.1-class-flaring active region(AR 11283)during 22:10 UT until 23:00 UT,on 2011 September 6;and a non-flaring active region(AR 12194)during 08:00:00 UT until 09:00:00 UT on2014 October 26.By using the spatially synthesized Gaussian differential emission measure(DEM)forward-fitting method,we calculate the peak temperatures for each strip of the loops.We apply the Lomb–Scargle method to compute the oscillation periods for the temperature series of each strip.The periods of the temperature oscillations for the flaring loops ranged from 7 to 28.4 minutes.These temperature oscillations show very close behavior to the slow-mode oscillation.We observe that the temperature oscillations in the flaring loops started at least around10 minutes before the transverse oscillations and continue for a long time duration even after the transverse oscillations ended.The temperature amplitudes increased during the flaring time(20 minutes)in the flaring loops.The periods of the temperatures obtained for the non-flaring loops ranged from 8.5 to 30 minutes,but their significances are less(below 0.5)in comparison with the flaring ones(near to one).Hence the detected temperature periods for the non-flaring loops’strips are less probable in comparison with the flaring ones,and maybe they are just fluctuations.Based on our confined observations,it seems that the flaring loops’periods show more diversity and their temperatures have wider ranges of variation than the non-flaring ones.More accurate commentary in this respect requires more extensive statistical research and broader observations.

Systematic error analysis and compensation for high accuracy star centroid estimation of star tracker

Subpixel centroid estimation is the most important star image location method of star tracker. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the systematic error of subpixel centroid estimation algorithm utilizing frequency domain analysis under the con-sideration of sampling frequency limitation and sampling window limitation. Explicit expression of systematic error of cen-troid estimation is obtained, and the dependence of systematic error on Gaussian width of star image, actual star centroid loca-tion and the number of sampling pixels is derived. A systematic error compensation algorithm for star centroid estimation is proposed based on the result of theoretical analysis. Simulation results show that after compensation, the residual systematic errors of 3-pixel-and 5-pixel-windows’ centroid estimation are less than 2×10-3 pixels and 2×10-4 pixels respectively.

Positioning a fluorescent probe at the core of a glassy star polymer for detection of local dynamics

Accessing local dynamics within a single macromolecule is the key to understand the physical origin of the viscoelasticity and especially the glass transition. In order to extract specific information on the dynamics of the branch point of a star polymer around its glass transition temperature, four-arm star poly （n-butyl methacrylate） with a fluorescent core was synthesized using perylene diimide as initiator and polymerization conducted via atom transfer radical polymerization. The process is found to be effective in positioning the fluorophore at the branch point with the fluorophore intact, which allows the successful application of single molecule fluorescence defocus imaging in examining the local site- sensitive dynamics. The power spectra of rotation trajectories, the population of rotating fluorophores as well as the distribution of angular displacement were used to revel the difference in local dynamics between branch point and the arm＇s end. It is discovered that the local dynamics at the core of the star polymer is much less activated than that at the arm＇s end. The results demonstrate the strong effect dues to the topological constrain at the branch point and the more free space at the arm＇s end.