THE ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL    VOLUME 113, NUMBER 5, PAGE 1788          MAY 1997

                  A NEAR-INFRARED IMAGING SURVEY OF NGC 2282

                               DONALD J. HORNER

               Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland,
                         College Park, Maryland 20742

                               ELIZABETH A. LADA

  Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611

                                CHARLES J. LADA

           Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 60 Garden Street,
                        Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

    We present the first near-infrared (JHK) imaging and photometry of a
    young cluster associated with NGC 2282, a reflection nebula in
    Monoceros. Our observations reveal that the cluster is centrally
    concentrated with a surface density that falls as 1/r. The cluster
    has a radius of roughly 1.6 pc and contains at least 100 members,
    approximately 9% of which exhibit infrared excess emission
    characteristic of young stellar objects. Infrared extinction maps
    suggest that the cluster is located at the edge of a molecular cloud
    and is not heavily reddened. We construct the K-band luminosity
    function (KLF) of the cluster and find that it increases with magnitude
    up to the completeness limit of our observations (m_(K)=15.0). The
    shape of the KLF is similar to those of other young clusters, such as
    IC 348 and the Trapezium, which suggest that the cluster contains a
    significant population of pre-main sequence stars. However, at the
    distance of NGC 2282 (1.7 kpc) our observations are not deep enough to
    sample the low mass end of the cluster IMF. Consequently, our KLF does
    not provide meaningful constraints on either the age of the cluster or
    the duration of star formation within it. On the other hand, the low
    extinction toward the cluster, its location at the edge of a molecular
    cloud, and the relatively small fraction of infrared excess sources
    suggest that it is a relatively evolved cluster of pre-main-sequence
    stars with an age of 5-10 x 10^(6) years. (Copyright) 1997 American
    Astronomical Society.