Patent ID: 7595483

Claim:
A method for determining test star location in a field of view of stellar sensor, comprising: (a) shining a narrow beam of light onto pixels of a stellar sensor to produce a response output from each illuminated pixel, and a non-response output from each non-illuminated pixel, the illuminated pixels including an illuminated test pixel; (b) obtaining data of the response outputs of illuminated pixels and data of the non-response outputs from non-illuminated pixels; (c) forming data frames from the data of response outputs and non-response outputs, data of the response output of the illuminated test pixel being in all of the data frame sections; (d) forming a data point from a data frame section of a data frame, data frame sections of the data frame producing data points; (e) forming a data array from the data points; (f) forming data patches from the data array; and (g) processing the data patches to determine a test star location in a field of view of the stellar sensor.