Design of a mini star simulator based on digital optical processing

The technical scheme of a star simulator based on Digital Light Processing(DLP) technology is proposed in order to meet the demands of a star sensor in spacecraft engineering.The general optical structure is confirmed according to the technical indexes of a star sensor.Then,the optical system parameters of the simulator are calculated by the specification of a Digital Micro-mirror Device(DMD).Finally,a dynamic display algorithm for the star map is introduced.The simulating results indicate that field of view of 10.5°×7.5°,star magnitude simulated of 2.0～8.0 and the single-star field angle of less than 40″ are obtained,and the sampling period is controlled within several milliseconds.The experimental result can satisfy the system requirements of big field of view,wide magnitude range and short sampling period.