Vega and the local interstellar medium

Very high-quality, high-resolution optical CCD and photographic spectra of Vega reveal interstellar components in many spectra lines. The presence of these interstellar features suggests that detailed studies of such bright stars carried out with superb new data now available must take careful account of such contaminants in both abundance determinations and line profile fitting. Analyses of the interstellar features themselves can contribute to the general knowledge of the local ISM, an area previously largely limited to UV observations obtained by space facilties.