  We have carried out a simultaneous, multi-band (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 and with modest visual extinctions (\leq 10 mag).
Previous studies found that star formation in L1630 occurs mainly in four
localized clusters, which in turn are associated with the four most massive
molecular cores (Lada et al. 1991; Lada 1992). 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 half 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 Myrs). Our
results are consistent with McKee's model of photoionization-regulated star
formation.
