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.

通过光谱观测确定晚型恒星的光球丰度是一个成熟的领域，建立在坚实的理论基础上。事实证明，改善这些基础以提高推断丰度的准确性具有挑战性，但已经取得了进展。与此同时，仪器仪表（主要是多目标光谱学）的发展非常引人注目，许多项目正在收集对整个银河系和附近星系恒星的大量观测数据，有望在我们理解星系形成和演化方面取得重要进展。在简要描述了恒星光谱分析中涉及的基本物理和输入数据后，对分析步骤以及应对大规模观测工作的可用工具进行了回顾。本文最后快速概述了相关正在进行和计划进行的光谱调查，以及近期光球丰度研究的重点。