  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.
