Star Simulator Software Development ⭐

Development of star simulator software for star sensor research during my internship at the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional). This software will generate star image or video by the user by first providing three inputs which are:

1. Right ascension (α)
2. Declination (δ)
3. Roll (ψ)

It's basically a planetarium software but only shows stars. This software can be used for star pattern recognition system validation.

Description 📘

In this repository, the main file that generates the star image is star_simulator.py. When running the main file, the star image will be automatically saved under the directory sample_images/ with .jpg extension. Other files include:

1. SAO.xlsx
   This file contains the complete star catalogue from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
2. star_filtering.py
   This script is for generating CSV files to create filtered star catalogue that contains stars only in a specified magnitude range and will be saved under the directory filtered_catalogue/
3. nested_function.py
   This is the script used to minimize the hassle of creating the full code for generating a star image when trying to create each frame for the star tracking video.
4. star_sim_with_angular_rate.py.
   Generates the star tracking video and the video will be automatically saved under the directory sample_tracking_videos/ with .avi extension.
5. star_image_class.py
   This image is the class file which can be reused for any development in the future.
6. gui_root.py
   Run this to get a more user friendly interface. This is the graphical user interface based star simulator.

Dependencies

Before running star_simulator.py, Python must be installed and the following libraries:

• Numpy

pip install numpy

• Pandas

pip install pandas

• Matplotlib

pip install matplotlib

• OpenCV

pip install cv2-python

• Tkinter

pip install tkinter

App Screenshot!

Run gui_root.py you will get this result!

Features:

• Change the attitude of the field of view (in Celestial Coordinates)
• Change the focal length of the camera
• Change the pixel size of the camera

More

Celestial coordinates can be visualised in this picture below:

Source: skyeandtelescope.org