First italian space debris observatory: the image processing automation

Space debris are a concern for operative satellites and human missions. A large amount of debris is located in Low Earth Orbit and in Geostationary Orbit, and several institutes all around the world monitor the growth of the debris population. Since a few years, GAUSS (Group of Astrodynamics of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”) has been carrying out space debris observation campaigns exploiting amateur astronomers’ facilities. Presently GAUSS is making up, in the frame of a contract with Italian Space Agency (ASI), the first Italian optical observa-tory completely addressed to space debris detection. During the optical campaigns, a large number of images is expected to be archived. This is the reason why a software is needed to process the images in order to automatically detect the objects and correlate them with the catalogue. The algorithm is based mainly on single-frame handling to make the noise level as flat as possible, with a successive two-image comparison which allows removing stars and bi-ases. In the object detection procedure a shape identification algorithm has been avoided, in order to reduce calculation time. The last step is the object identification by comparison with the Two-Line Elements catalogue. The actual position of the detected objects is compared with the propagated positions of the catalogued ones. In conclusion, both the image processing itself and the object identification are performed automatically. The paper describes the logic of the developed algorithm as well as the preliminary results of the software.