Abstract:
We have measured the JHK magnitudes of 47 stars in the region of the extremely young Orion nebula star cluster NGC 1976. These, in combination with the existing near-infrared and optical data, are used to study the intracluster extinction law. This indicates an anomalous distribution of interstellar grains in the vicinity of many stars causing less extinction in the U, B,R, and I passbands than that obtained from the colour excess E(V-J)using a normal interstellar extinction law. This implies a small shift in the grain size distribution towards larger than normal sized particles in these regions.
