Looking for distributed star formation in L1630: A near-infrared (J, H, K) survey

We have carried out a simultaneous, multiband (J, H, K) survey over an area of 1320 arcmin(2) in the L1630 region, concentrating on the region away from the dense molecular cores with modest visual extinctions (less than or equal to 10 mag). Previous studies by Lada and coworkers showed that star formation in L1630 occurs mainly in four localized clusters, which in turn are associated with the four most massive molecular cores. The goal of this study is to look for a distributed population of pre-main-sequence stars in the outlying areas outside the known star-forming cores. More than 60% of the pre-main-sequence stars in the active star-forming regions of NGC 2024 and NGC 2023 show a near-infrared excess in the color-color diagram. In the outlying areas of L1630, excluding the known star-forming regions, we found that among 510 infrared sources with the near-infrared colors (J-H and H-K) determined and photometric uncertainty at K better than 0.10 mag, the fraction of the sources with a near-infrared excess is 3%-8%; the surface density of the sources with a near-infrared excess is less than one-seventh of that found in the distributed population in L1641, and 1/20 of that in the young cluster NGC 2023. This extremely low fraction and low surface density of sources with a near-infrared excess strongly indicates that recent star formation activity has been very low in the outlying region of L1630. The sources without a near-infrared excess could be either background/foreground field stars or associated with the cloud, but formed a long time ago (more than 2 Myr). Our results are consistent with McKee's model of photoionization-regulated star formation.