Abstract: To realize single-station passive location to sea surface ship target by photoelectric reconnaissance equipment, the method of high-precision and near-real-time photoelectric single-station passive location to sea surface target was proposed. The equations of single-station passive location were constructed, the location errors were analyzed, the factors affecting the location errors were explored, and the application suggestions of single-station passive location were given. Simulation results show that the location error is about 1.672%R at range of 17.899 km, with once location time about 20 ms. The errors of location, latitude, longitude and altitude are separately subject to normal distribution with N (299.31 m, 197.39 m), N (4.944×10^−5°, 2.665×10^−3°), N (4.038×10^−5°, 1.899×10^−3°)and N (−0.485 m, 14.165 m). The errors of pitch, azimuth and target altitude have a great influence on the location accuracy. The location results are reliable when pitch is in the domain of −120°, −15°, and the location error is smaller than 800 m when target altitude error is in the domain of −200 m, 200 m, which realizes the high-precision and near-real-time single-station passive location to sea surface target. The proposed method is suitable for single-station passive location of sea surface, ground and air targets with reference plane of target altitude.