A Star Map Matching Method Based on Magnitude Stratification and Seed Diffusion for Dense Star Scenes

Astronomical positioning of space targets is an important task in space situational awareness. In both ground-based and space-based optical observation scenarios, accurate positioning relies on the reliable matching of numerous stars in observational images. However, dense star scenes increase the ambiguity of local patterns and the computational burden of candidate retrieval. Building on established geometric voting and catalog-indexing strategies, this paper develops a two-stage star map matching method that specifically combines adaptive magnitude stratification with seed-guided residual-star diffusion for large-field dense star scenes. In the first stage, an adaptive magnitude-stratified bright-star subset is selected according to field density, and angular-distance voting is used to obtain reliable seed correspondences. In the second stage, residual-star candidates are retrieved from seed-centered dual-feature sub-libraries indexed by angular distance and magnitude difference, and are then refined through single-seed local diffusion and multi-seed global fusion. Experimental results from both simulated and real observational data demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a high matching success rate with low computational cost and performs effectively in large-field, dense star scenes. The proposed method provides a practical matching solution for astronomical positioning in dense star scenes.