Contents

1. Introduction
2. FLAIR overview
   1. The U.K. Schmidt Telescope
   2. Development of the FLAIR system
   3. Fibre positioning method
   4. Plateholders
   5. Fibre feeds
   6. Acquisition system
   7. Fibre positioner
   8. Spectrograph
   9. CCD system
   10. Calibration
   11. Future Developments
3. Planning observations with FLAIR
   1. Fibre-feed options
   2. Spectrograph options
   3. Wavelength calibration
   4. Sensitivity
   5. Limits to observing
   6. Applying for time
4. Detailed FLAIR-II Plateholder set-up procedures
   1. Preliminaries
      1. Marking-up target objects on the FLAIR mask
      2. Choosing image guide and fiducial stars
   2. Preparing a Plateholder
      1. Mounting a Plateholder on the X-Y table
      2. Removing the dark-slide
      3. Inserting the whitened aluminium backing plate
      4. Inserting the marked-up FLAIR mask into the Plateholder
   3. Powering up the `AutoFred' system
   4. The Fibre-ing process
      1. The gripper assembly
      2. Gluing on the fibres
      3. The fiducial fibre bundle
      4. Affixing an image guide socket to the plate
      5. Considerations and advice
   5. Tensioning the Plateholder
   6. Securing the fibres
   7. Preparing the Plateholder for the next field
      1. Remove adhesive tape
      2. De-tensioning the Plateholder
      3. Removing fibres from a de-tensioned plate
      4. Removing the image guide socket
      5. Changing plates
      6. Cleaning the gripper jaws
   8. Storage of the Plateholder at the end of a run
5. References
6. Appendix.A. FLAIR-II fibre-ing summary
7. Appendix.B. FLAIR-II fibre-ing. Essential crib sheet
8. Appendix.C. Run preparation crib sheet

About this document ...