The UVES Paranal Observatory Project: a public library of high resolution stellar spectra

The UVES Paranal Observatory Project (POP), is an ESO public database of about 400 stars whose high quality spectra were obtained with UVES, the high resolution spectrometer of the VLT. All stars were observed with two instrument modes, in order to cover almost completely the optical region (300-1000 nm). The resolving power is about 80000, and for most of the spectra, the typical S/N ratio is 300-500 in the V band. Program stars fall into two groups, stars belonging to open clusters IC2391 and NGC6475, and bright field stars. For field stars, the only selection criterion applied was to cover the largest possible variety of spectral types in the HR diagram, including peculiar objects, e.g., Ap and Bp stars, Wolf-Rayet stars, Be stars, carbon stars and metal poor stars. The spectra have been reduced, coadded and merged and various products can be downloaded from a public area. For each star the final spectrum may be displayed through a dedicated user-friendly Spectral Preview Interface. The database is accessible at http://www.eso.org/uvespop