Patent ID: 8222582

Claim:
A method for characterizing luminous celestial objects in celestial navigation of a missile system, said method comprising: segmenting wavelength range into a plurality of discrete contiguous bins; assigning each bin of said plurality of bins into a plurality of color bands; establishing a transmissivity to said each bin of each color band; measuring luminous intensity from a target object for said each bin as a plurality of measured intensities; computing broad-based fluxes for a reference value as a reference flux, said target object as a target flux estimate for said each color band, and a narrow-band library as a library flux, wherein said reference and library fluxes include summing a first multiplication of said transmissivity for said each bin and a reference luminous intensity for said each bin over said plurality of bins; ratioing said target flux to said library flux as a color scale for each said color band; squaring said library flux for each said color band as a library flux squared; producing a spectral scale by summing over said plurality of color bands a second multiplication of said color scale and said library flux squared as a first sum product, summing over said plurality of color bands said library flux squared as a second sum product and dividing first sum product by said second sum product; scaling each measured intensity of said plurality of measured intensities as a scaled intensity by multiplying each said target intensity by said spectral scale for each said bin; and determining a scaled broad-band flux for said each color band by summing over said plurality of bins a third multiplication of said transmissivity and said scaled intensity.