Abundance analysis of targets for the COROT/MONS asteroseismology missions - I. Semi-automatic abundance analysis of the gamma Dor star HD 49434

One of the goals of the ground-based support program for the COROT and MONS/Romer satellite missions is to select and characterise suitable target stars for the part of the missions dedicated to asteroseismology. While the global atmospheric parameters may be determined with good accuracy from the Stromgren indices, careful abundance analysis must be made for the proposed main targets. This is a time consuming process considering the long list of primary and secondary targets. We have therefore developed new software called VWA for this task. The VWA automatically selects the least blended lines from the atomic line database VALD, and consequently adjusts the abundance in order to find the best match between the calculated and observed spectra. The variability of HD 49434 was discovered as part of COROT ground-based support observations. Here we present a detailed abundance analysis of HD 49434 using VWA. For most elements we find abundances somewhat below the Solar values, in particular we find [Fe/H] = -0.13 +/- 0.14. We also present the results from the study of the variability that is seen in spectroscopic and photometric time series observations. From the characteristics of the variation seen in photometry and in the line profiles we propose that HD 49434 is a variable star of the gamma Doradus type.