A STUDY OF CARINA-OB2 ASSOCIATION .1. OBSERVATIONAL DATA

In the present study, new UBV photometric data of 470 stars and accurate MK spectral types for 105 stars in the field of the Carina OB2 association are presented. This material is accurate to determine the distance, age, and color excess distribution of the association. Moreover, we present a radial velocity study of the 37 brightest stars in the field of the association. For these stars we obtained between three and ten spectra per star. With the same observational material, we derived projected axial rotational velocities for stars later than O9 on the main sequence. We call attention to several peculiar stars or probable early-type SB1 and SB2 systems of potential astrophysical interest. The discussion of the observational data are detailed in Paper II, where we show that, (1) Carina OB2 is a genuine stellar association, (2) it is located at a distance of 3.1 kpc from the Sun, (3) its age is about 4 x 10(6) yr, according with the bluest star on the main sequence.