A Method for Correcting Telescope Pointing Error in Optical Space Debris Surveys

In the data processing of optical space debris observations, the background stars may be mismatched or unable to get matched due to the influence of the telescope pointing error, then it is difficult to calculate the plate model and to determine accurately the object position. Based on the characteristics of debris CCD images, a multiple neighborhood matching method based on feature stars is proposed. The experimental results show that the influence of the telescope pointing error can be removed, and that the efficiency and correctness of background star map matching are improved significantly. Meanwhile, the time cost of this method is low, so it is beneficial to the real-time data reduction.