In 2001-2 I was a PhD student in Vienna in the astronomy group of Werner Weiss. At that time I started developing a program for semi-automatic abundance analysis of the stellar spectra of A-G type main sequence stars. During the past four years the program has been improved and today you can download it from the VWA webpage.

About two years ago I promised Conny Aerts (Leuven, Belgium) to perform an abundance analysis of a sample of Gamma Doradus stars. They are A-F type stars found to be slightly cooler than the "red edge" of the classical instability strip. In other words, typical surface temperatures on these stars are 6500-7000 Kelvin, ie. somewhat hotter than the Sun. The first paper on the analysis of the spectra has been completed by Peter De Cat. At the moment I am writing the second paper on the abundance analysis of the Gamma Dor stars.

So why am I doing this? Well, the surface abundance is an important parameter when doing detailed modelling of pulsating variable stars.

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