CCD Photometry — Present and Future

Abstract

I will briefly treat some of the developments relating to CCD photometry which have taken place over the last two to three years, and speculate on those which can be anticipated to take place in the near future. CCDs have been in widespread use as astronomical detectors for slightly more than a decade. For the majority of visual-light projects they have displaced the photographic plate and the photomultiplier as the detector-of-choice, except in applications requiring large area coverage or high time resolution, but even here the development of arrays and the use of more sophisticated electronics has permitted encroachment into these domains. The use of large, low-noise detectors for CCD photometry places stringent demands on telescope optics, instruments, controllers, calibration procedures, data reduction methods and data storage, and forces a holistic approach to managing the data flow from detector to final storage medium.For an earlier review on this field see Walker (1993); other papers presented at IAU Colloquium No. 136 and IAU Symposium 167 (these proceedings) should be consulted for different topics, alternative viewpoints, and more in-depth discussions of specific subjects.