Quantifying uncertainties in signal position in non-resolved object images: Application to space object observation

Abstract

Charged Coupled Devices (CCDs) and subsequently Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) detectors revolutionized scientific imaging. On both the CCD and CMOS detector, the generated images are degraded by inevitable noise. In many applications, such as in astronomy or for satellite tracking, only unresolved object images are available. Strategies to estimate the center of the non-resolved image their results are affected by the detector noise. The uncertainty in the center is classically estimated by running prohibitively costly Monte Carlo simulations, but in this paper, we propose analytic uncertainty estimates of the center position. The expressions that depend on the pixel size, the signal to noise ratio and the extension of the object signal relative to the pixel size are validated against rigorous Monte Carlo simulations with very satisfying results. Numerical tests show that our analytic expression is an efficient substitute to the Monte Carlo simulation thereby reducing computational cost.