In order to simplify the atmospheric refraction correction process and improve the independent attitude measurement capability of star sensor,a new atmospheric refraction correction method based on reference quantity correction is proposed.The proposed method is simple in star apparent zenith distance calculation and it does not require the information of carrier attitude.The refraction correction doesn′ t need to solve the dual nonlinear equations,it only needs simple addition.Simulation and experimental results show that the results of attitude estimation using the reference quantity refraction correction method and are consistent with those of the observed quantity refraction correction method,and the relative error between them is within 0.1 arc seconds.For star sensor attitude measuring application,the proposed refraction correction method does not need external posture information.It is simple and has no loss of attitude measuring precision.