Following the recent discovery a large population of young stars in front of the Orion Nebula we carried out an observational campaign with the DECam wide-field camera covering approximately 10 square degrees centered on NGC 1980 to confirm, probe the extent, and characterize this foreground population of pre-main sequence stars. We used multi-wavelength wide field images and catalogs to identify potential foreground pre-main sequence stars using a novel probabilistic technique based on a careful selection of colors and luminosities. We confirmed the presence of a large foreground population towards the Orion A cloud. This population contains several distinct sub-groups including NGC 1980 and NGC 1981 and stretches over several degrees in front of the Orion A cloud. By comparing the location of their sequence in various color-magnitude diagrams to other clusters, we found a distance and an age of 380pc and 5 to 10Myr, in good agreement with previous estimates. Our final sample includes 2123 candidate members and is complete from below the hydrogen burning limit to about 0.3M_{sun}_ where the data starts to be limited by saturation. Extrapolating the mass function to the high masses, we estimated a total number of ~2600 members in the surveyed region.

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/564/A29/catalog (Positions and griz Y JHKs magnitudes)