Posted to CCD-world:
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I would like to underscore Alain's comment on the difficulties faced
by "small-time" operations at the moment when trying to acquire new
devices. Many of today's sources do tend to be focused on those
who have large budgets and are looking for many devices. For those
who want one or two devices at a time, options are quite limited.
EEV and SITe work hard to address both sides, but they will necessarily
be focused on obtaining large scale contracts as much as they can,
and individual device orders cannot receive the same savings as
bulk contracts. (The periodic "sell-offs" by EEV do ameliorate
the situation somewhat.)
Perhaps this links to the discussion of the future of best-effort
contracts (meaning wafer runs with individual selection of devices
for thinning). I, for one, would like to see these continue, in an
open manner, while still maintaining the made-to-order approach.
Historically, the best-effort contracts have produced the best
devices at any given time. They can be used to experiment with
new techniques and buyers have a high degree of control over which
devices are thinned and how they are optimised for various
applications. The risk is generally quite high, but the payoff
can also be high -- witness the very high QE obtained by Mike Lesser
before larger concerns could follow suit. This has allowed the
NOT to carve a niche in the blue and challenge the performance of
larger mirrors.
Perhaps this is a good time to suggest the development of a
"small-timer" consortium and explore options of having a large
number of such groups pool their resources...
Finally, as ever, I think that we have a sufficiently diverse
community that we need to maintain as many options as possible.
Many are interested in large area (4kx4k and up) developments,
but many too would be happy with seeing smaller (2kx2k and 2kx4k)
devices get cheaper and more easily available. Economics
are frequently the controlling factor, but I would encourage
the large concerns to remember the small, specialist shopper.
Best regards,
Tim Abbott.
--
Tim Abbott tabbott at not.iac.es
Support Astronomer http://www.not.iac.es/~tabbott/
Nordic Optical Telescope
Apartado 474 E-38700, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain
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