Comparison of Two Fast Object Matching Algorithms

Positions and magnitudes of stars are important to astronomical researches and space navigations.The data (such as those for position and brightness) extracted from CCD images of a dense star field usually need to be fast matched to a stellar catalog. A variety of object matching algorithms have been developed. In this paper, we compare two most recent matching algorithms: i) a method based on (positional) vectors;ii a method based on quantitative characteristics of relative stellar positions as described by the radii and circumferential directions from a chosen center. Through matching the CCD images taken with the 1 m telescope of the Yunnan Observatory,we find that the method based on vectors is faster and is thus practically more effective.