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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-183-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>An Adaptive Multi-Scale Star Centroid Localization Algorithm with Bayesian Iterative Weighting and Performance Analysis</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhou</surname>
<given-names>Tiyou</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Mi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Huang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dong</surname>
<given-names>Tengteng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Xinsheng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lou</surname>
<given-names>Yifan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1515-6942</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hu</surname>
<given-names>Zhongyu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory, School of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company, Ltd., Changchun 130102, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-1-2026</volume>
<fpage>183</fpage>
<lpage>191</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Tiyou Zhou et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/183/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-183-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/183/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-183-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/183/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-183-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-1-2026/183/2026/isprs-annals-XI-1-2026-183-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Star centroid localization accuracy fundamentally limits spacecraft attitude determination precision. Existing methods face a critical accuracy-efficiency trade-off: traditional intensity-weighted approaches achieve computational efficiency (&amp;lt;1 ms/star) but suffer from poor noise robustness, while Gaussian fitting and deep learning methods provide high accuracy at prohibitive computational costs. We address this fundamental limitation by developing a principled Bayesian Multi-Scale Adaptive Iteratively Weighted (BMAI) centroid localization algorithm that achieves high accuracy approaching theoretical limits while maintaining real-time computational efficiency. The algorithm integrates four key technical contributions: (1) SNR-adaptive window extraction with robust threshold estimation, (2) regularized iteratively weighted framework with proven convergence properties, (3) multi-scale fusion with SNR-dependent weighting, and (4) gradient-based refinement to mitigate systematic bias. Rigorous theoretical analysis establishes convergence guarantees, derives error bounds, and evaluates Cram&amp;eacute;r-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) efficiency. Comprehensive evaluation on 16,500 synthetic star images across six diverse imaging scenarios demonstrates that under high-SNR conditions (SNR &amp;gt;25, n=2,000), BMAI achieves mean RMSE of 0.0120 pixels (95% CI: [0.0116, 0.0124] pixels), representing a 98.6% relative improvement over intensity-weighted centroiding (0.857 pixels), 35.8% improvement over Gaussian fitting (0.0187 pixels) and 95.3% improvement over CNN methods(0.2566 pixels). The algorithm maintains computational efficiency of 0.89ms per star&amp;mdash;8.7&amp;times; faster than Gaussian fitting&amp;mdash;while achieving CRLB efficiency of 79.2%. Robustness analysis demonstrates stable performance across SNR range 3-100 with graceful degradation under challenging conditions. The BMAI algorithm fundamentally resolves the accuracy-efficiency trade-off in star centroid localization through principled Bayesian inference and multi-scale processing.</p>
</abstract>
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