  We conducted deep NIR imaging observations of the Orion molecular cloud 2 and
3 using QUIRC on the 88-inch telescope of the University of Hawaii. Our
purposes are 1) to generate a comprehensive NIR source catalog of these star
forming clouds, and 2) to identify the NIR counterpart of the Chandra X-ray
sources that have no counterpart in the 2MASS catalog. Our J-, H-, and K-band
observations are about 2 mag deeper than those of 2MASS, and well match the
current Chandra observation. We detected 1448 NIR sources, for which we derived
the position, the J-, H-, and K-band magnitude, and the 2MASS counterpart.
Using this catalog, we identified the NIR counterpart for about 42% of the
2MASS-unIDed Chandra sources. The nature of these Chandra sources are discussed
using their NIR colors and spatial distributions, and a dozen protostar and
brown dwarf candidates are identified.
