Fine tracking system for balloon-borne telescopes

We present the results of a study along with a first prototype of a high precision system (? 1 arcsec) for pointing and tracking light (near-infrared) telescopes on board stratospheric balloons. Such a system is essentially composed by a star sensor and by a star tracker, able to recognize the field and to adequately track the telescope, respectively. We present the software aimed at processing the star sensor image and the predictive algorithm that allows the fine tracking of the source at a sub-pixel level. The laboratory tests of the system are described and its performance is analyzed. We demonstrate how such a device, when used at the focal plane of enough large telescopes (2-4m, F/10), is capable to provide (sub-)arcsec diffraction limited images in the near infrared bands.