[en] The POLARIS spectrometer at ISIS is currently being scheduled for use as a high intensity, medium resolution powder diffractometer. The particularly high neutron flux on POLARIS enables experiments to be performed with comparatively short counting times or on small sample volumes. This ability has been exploited during kinetic experiments of phase changes, where diffraction data is collected whilst the furnace is heating up. The provision of a large detector bank at 2 θ ∼ 90⁰ is particularly important for studies of powder samples at high pressures. This scattering geometry has significant advantages for experiments of this kind, as suitable collimation of the incident and outgoing beams eliminates scattering from the surrounding pressure transmitting medium. This guide is intended to give a short description of the POLARIS powder diffractometer and to provide the basic information required to perform a powder diffraction experiment. (author)