Solar and Stellar Photospheric Abundances

The determination of photospheric abundances in late-type stars from spectroscopic observations is a well-established field, built on solid theoretical foundations. Improving those foundations to refine the accuracy of the inferred abundances has proven challenging, but progress has been made. In parallel, developments on instrumentation, chiefly regarding multi-object spectroscopy, have been spectacular, and a number of projects are collecting large numbers of observations for stars across the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, promising important advances in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. After providing a brief description of the basic physics and input data involved in the analysis of stellar spectra, a review is made of the analysis steps, and the available tools to cope with large observational efforts. The paper closes with a quick overview of relevant ongoing and planned spectroscopic surveys, and highlights of recent research on photospheric abundances.Comment: Invited review to appear in Living Reviews in Solar Physics. 39 pages, 7 figure

A catalogue of accurate wavelengths in the optical spectrum of the Sun

We present accurate measurements of the central wavelengths of 4947 atomic absorption lines in the solar optical spectrum. The wavelengths, precise to a level ~ 50-150 m/s, are given for both flux and disc-centre spectra, as measured in relatively recent FTS solar atlases. This catalogue modernizes existing sources based on photographic measurements and provides a benchmark to test and perform wavelength calibrations of astronomical spectra. It will also permit observers to improve the absolute wavelength calibration of solar optical spectra when lamps are not available at the telescope.Comment: 3 pages, 1 ASCII table (4947 records, download the source to view); uses aa.cls (included); accepted for publication in A&A