The Canis Major overdensity (CMa) was initially proposed to be the remnant of
a tidally disrupting dSph galaxy. Since its nature is still subject of debate,
the goal of the present work was to conduct a large-scale RR Lyrae survey in
CMa, in order to see if there is an overdensity of these stars. The survey
spans a total area of ~34 sq. deg. with observations in V and R filters, made
with the 1.0m Jurgen Stock Schmidt telescope at the National Astronomical
Observatory of Venezuela. Current results in a subregion, including
spectroscopic observations, show that the small number of RR Lyrae stars found
can be accounted for by the halo and thick disk components of our Galaxy.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium
No241 "Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies