[Shiraz (Ray)]

as others have pointed out, there is not much more that is physically possible with detector sensitivity - don't expect much more than fractional advances, it can't happen.

As I see it, the final game changing advance in detector technology will be the development of affordable really-low-read-noise chips. these will allow:

- lucky imaging of brighter DSOs. This will give around an order of magnitude improvement in resolution with bigger scopes, as it will cut through atmospheric seeing. The resolution enjoyed by planetary imagers will be available for brighter DSOs. The requirement here will be fairly small pixels or Barlow lenses to take advantage of the fleeting bursts of high quality seeing. The big downside will be that this will unmask the previously hidden faults in telescopes - systems designed to image well enough at 1-2 arcsec resolution (seeing limited) will not necessarily work so effectively at the diffraction limit (eg 0.3 arcsec).

- high quality imaging with lower precision mounts. There will no longer be a need to use 10 minute subs for broadband imaging - large numbers of subs a few seconds long (or even less than 1 second for brighter objects) should be effective with read noise in the vicinity of 1 electron. The whole paraphenalia of hugely expensive precision mounts, OAG/ONAGs (or any guiding systems for that matter), adaptive optics etc. will be largely unnecessary, since all you will need is a mount that can keep an image stable for very short periods of time - the stacking software can compensate for longer term drifts such as periodic error or image rotation if on an altaz mount.

I don't think that this is a pipe dream - there are at least 3 different low read noise technologies out there, but none is currently anything like affordable for a hobbyist. There will be hidden gotchas, but even so, low read noise chips could be revolutionary.