Abstract
An experimental study was conducted by Hughes Aircraft Company to determine telescope field of view requirements for human recognition of navigation stars. The study was conducted at the Griffith Park Planetarium in Los Angeles. Four Air Force navigators viewed the night sky projected on the planetarium dome through a simulated telescope. The subjects had control of telescope azimuth and elevation. The telescope had unity power fields of view ranging between 10 and 45 degrees. The subjects were required to identify and acquire any one of the 35 major navigation stars. The results revealed a significant inverse relationship between field of view size and navigation star acquisition-identification time. Identification errors also varied inversely as a function of field of view size, and mean acquisition-identification times were significantly different between subjects. The minimum field of view required for rapid, accurate star identification-acquisition was established to be between 25 and 30 degrees.
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