Search for symbiotic stars in the Milky Way

We present the search for symbiotic stars in the Northern Galactic Plane within the IPHAS imaging survey. The criterion used to select this class of objects is a combination of the IPHAS r-H alpha vs. r-i color-color diagram with the 2MASS J-H vs. H-K diagram. This allows us to distinguish symbiotic stars from other classes of Ha-emitting evolved stars and nebulae. Confusion with young stars in star-forming regions can be also limited by a careful selection of the regions of the Milky Way to be investigated. In this way more than a thousand new candidate symbiotic stars have been selected so far, and a spectroscopic campaign to determine their real nature is in progress.