Hipparcos, IUE, and the Stellar Content of the Solar Neighbourhood

The spectroscopic parallaxes in the Hipparcos catalogue can be used to translate absolute stellar fluxes observed at Earth to the fluxes emerging at the stellar surface for nearby stars. The comparison of these fluxes with the predictions of theoretical model atmospheres allows us to determine the effective temperature and the metallicity of the stars. It is suggested that is possible to study the stellar content of the solar neighbourhood making use of the large number of ultraviolet spectra in the archive of the IUE satellite.