th The 4 ESO CCO Workshop, Optical Detectors for Astronomy, was held
during September 13-16, 1999 at its usual location, the headquarters of
the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. We prefer to
remember this workshop as a "meeting of friends", who came to Garching
to visit ESO and to present their work, rather than a formal meeting.
Based on our experience with the 1996 ESO CCO workshop, we deliberately
put emphasis on creating an environment that encouraged the participants
to stay together and informally exchange ideas. These informal events
began with a tour of the BWM auto factory and continued with a reception
at "SchloB Beletic", the conference dinner at a real SchloB of the
Bavarian International School (where the participants enjoyed basket,
baseball, table soccer, rock climbing and eventually dancing) and
concluded with a tour of the Paulaner Brewery and dinner at the Seehaus
in the Englisher Garten. The lunch "Biergarten", adjacent to the poster
session area, was a daily meeting point. The result was a good mixture
of excellent presentations and posters, collected in these Proceedings,
and many occasions for people to get in touch and to have fun together,
as witnessed by the selection of workshop pictures that we randomly
placed between papers. This book contains a special contribution.