Abstract: Aiming at the engineering problem of starlight refraction sensor’s ability fordetecting the starlight refracted in atmosphere, the atmospheric attenuation coefficient of the visible and near infrared stellar dueto dispersion, molecular scattering, ozone absorption and so on are analyzed, which determines starlight refraction sensor’s spectral width and the visual magnitude difference equivalent with narrow spectral detection.The starlight refraction sensor’s detection ability and detection probability are estimatedbased on signal to noise ratio calculation and SNRanalysis. The simulation results give the visual magnitude difference equivalent with the atmospheric attenuation to the different atmospheric altitude, and the limiting magnitude of the different temperature stellar in the different atmospheric altitude, which is helpful for the parameter design of starlight refraction sensor.

Key words: starlight refraction sensor, atmosphere density, attenuation coefficient, apparent luminance, lnfrared luminance, SNR