Abstract: This paper studies the method of the autonomous satellite celestial navigation by sensing Stellar Horizon of Atmospheric Refraction In order to establish the exact motion model, the 2nd zonal harmonic of the nonspherical earth gravity is introduced to the system equation The measurement equation with the refraction height as the observation is established based on the spherically-layered atmosphere with the exponential density The computer simulation is processed after establishing the Extended Kalman Filter equation The detailed error analysis of the simulation result is presented The result illustrates that the higher precision can be obtained using satellite autonomous celestial navigation by sensing stellar horizon of atmospheric refraction based on the perturbative orbit