Optical Detectors for Astronomy, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1998 Proceedings of an ESO CCD Workshop held in Garching, Germany, October 8–10, 1996 Astrophysics and Space Science Library Series, Vol. 228

The Workshop "Optical Detectors for Astronomy" was held during October 8-10, 1996 at the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. This was the third meeting of its kind, previous meetings being held in 1991 and 1993, but this is the first ESO "CCD Workshop" that has published proceedings. Most of the leading manufacturers and major astronomical observatories were represented, with the 117 attendees coming together from 14 different countries that spanned every continent on Earth. The motivation for the ESO CCD Workshop series is the creation of informal and open venue of information exchange about astronomical CCD detectors and systems. Judging from the reaction and feedback of the participants, the 1996 workshop was as successful as the previous editions, which is a credit to all who attended. The Workshop was organized as a mixture of invited talks, oral presentations, poster sessions and roundtable discussions, the latter used to foster a free exchange of ideas among participants. These technical sessions were complemented by an opening reception and a congenial evening in downtown Munich, which included a walking tour of the historic area followed by dinner at the famous Franziskaner brewery and an after dinner talk by Walter Kosonocky, who reviewed the history of CCD technology.

Large Area, Buttable Image Sensors for Mosaic Applications.- The State of CCD Technology at Lockheed Martin Fairchild Systems.- Large-Area Back-Illuminated CCD Imager Development.- CCDs for Astronomy.- Philips Imaging Technology and the mKxnK Image Sensor.- CFHT - Wide Field Imaging and “CCD-world” Host.- The Astronomical CCD Development Program at Copenhagen University.- Future Instrumentation for the Nordic Optical Telescope.- ESO’s Plan for Optical Detectors.- AAO Detectors — Present Status and Future Plans.- A Drift Scan Camera for Astrometry.- RGO (and ING) CCDs — Current Developments.- CCD development at the University of Hawaii.- High Precision Shutter for the T.N.G. CCD Camera.- Fabrication of Thinned CCDs at UCO/Lick Observatory.- ESO’s New CCD Testbench.- FIERA: ESO’S New Generation CCD Controller.- The Architecture for Two Generations of ESO VLT CCD Controllers.- Crymac — Cryostat Maintenance Controller.- Some Experiments With Simple Preamplifier Designs.- PULPO: Temperature, Vacuum, Shutter, LN2 Level, All in One Box.- Very-high Frame-rate Burst-image Sensor.- High Speed, Wide Dynamic Range CCD Systems for Applications in Astronomy.- Recent Results from the EEV CCD42.- The AIP Photometric Testbench.- High-Speed Data Acquisition System Messia for Subaru.- Readout Speed Optimization for Conventional CCDs Employing Dual Slope Integration for Double Correlated Sampling.- An Interferometric Method for Measurement of the Detector MTF.- The two EROS 4k x 8k CCD Mosaic Cameras.- Wide Field Imaging at CFHT: the MEGACAM Project.- Fringing — A User’s Perspective.- DEIMOS Dewar System.- High Precision Photometry from Space with COROT: Effect of Spatial Image Jitter on the Photometric Performances of CCDs.- Charge Transfer Efficiency in Proton DamagedCCDs.- Low Smear Drift Scanning CCDs.- Parallel Phase Test.- Converting a Schmidt Telescope to CCDs: the OCA/DLR Asteroid Survey.- On the Optimization of CCD Readout Noise.- How Linear Are Typical CCDs ?.- Application of the Arcon CCD Controller to the NOAO 8k Mosaic Imager.- Cleaning Contaminated CCDs.- CCD Flatness Measuring System at UCO/Lick Observatory.- The Orthogonal Transfer CCD.- A Technique for the Determination of Co-planarity in Mosaic CCD Cameras.- CCD Camera Calibration and Testing Using Compact LED Light Sources.- A Fully Depleted pn-Junction CCD for Infrared-, UV- and X-ray Detection.

These are the proceedings of a workshop held at the European Southern Observatory in October 1996, a workshop which concentrated on optical detectors for astronomy. Representatives from every leading manufacturer and all of the major astronomical observatories came together to present their work on Charged Coupled Devices (CCDs). The papers contained in these proceedings are concerned with the development, manufacture, testing and implementation of CCDs. Many discuss the electronics (hardware and software) that are used to operate these detectors. Astronomical observatories are the most ambitious and aggressive users of optical detectors, more so than any other scientific discipline. Since the quantum efficiency and noise of a detector have a direct effect on the quality of science, the ma