Introduction

 The Maryland-Caltech Fabry-Perot system is an optical instrument available at the Cassegrain foci of the Palomar 60-inch and 200-inch telescopes. Through the use of a scanning etalon, the astronomer is able to obtain moderate-resolution spectral observations across an entire field of view, making the instrument well suited to kinematic studies of galaxies, nebulae, and other extended objects. The well-know ``Jacquinot advantage'' also makes the Fabry-Perot system an appropriate instrument for the detection of faint line emission (Jacquinot 1954, J. Opt. Soc. Am., 44, 761).

Successful use of this instrument requires some knowledge of the workings of a Fabry-Perot system. Since this is beyond the scope of this manual, it is recommended that the observer consult one of the numerous useful references on Fabry-Perot instrumentation and associated science observations, such as Vaughan 1967 (ARA&A, 5, 139), Thorne 1974 (Spectrophysics, Wiley & Sons, New York), Atherton 1988 (Instrumentation for Ground-Based Optical Astronomy, Springer-Verlag, p. 124), and Bland & Tully 1989 (AJ, 98, 723).

The Maryland-Caltech Fabry-Perot instrument resulted from a collaboration between Stuart Vogel (University of Maryland) and Shri Kulkarni (Caltech). Joshua Roth put together much of the instrument as a project during the early stages of his Caltech graduate career. Hal Petrie (Caltech) did the mechanical design and gave his time generously to develop the instrument, including many improvements along the way. Jeff Hester (then at IPAC, now at Arizona State University) provided much of the initial design and the observing software used before the switch to FIGARO. Robert Gruendl (University of Maryland) developed many of the data cube analysis routines. Patrick Shopbell (Caltech) guided the development of the P200 version of the instrument and produced much of the documentation. The concept for the instrument came from a one-day meeting between Stuart Vogel, Jeff Hester, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, and Shri Kulkarni.

The Fabry-Perot is currently classified as a ``private'' instrument, meaning one of the above people should be contacted well in advance of any observing run which proposes to use the instrument. Contact information is given in Appendix D.