Re: Some answers to Richard's comments

[Ray Carlberg <carlberg@qold.astro.utoronto.ca>]

VISTA plans to use the new "deep depleted" CCDs (if it build the
optical imageer) which have very good z response. The EEV's appear to
go to zero QE at about 1micron and are inferior to what the CFH12k has
in the red bands.  Between area and sensitivity with essentially equal
image quality it is a lot more capable than CFHT. Our only advantage
is that we are in the north.  For anything that is hemisphere
independent the combination of VISTA and VST as two dedicated
telescopes is going to wipe out any small effort at CFHT.

However, we do have the most capable telescope for the next 5 years
which is quite a nice window. If we focus most of our time and effort
on key questions with sharply defined observations, then we can do
very well.