The Milky Way in Monoceros.

The section of the Milky Way in Monoceros, between galactic longitudes 176° and 186°, represents one of the most regular parts of the Milky Way. The present investigation is based on spectral types and col- ors to m = 11.5 and on general star counts to m = 14.5. The general absorption in the least-obscured regions is found to be of the order of Apg = 0.6 mag/kpc, for distances up to 2000 parsecs. The final results and conclusions are presented in Section VII at the end of the paper. The star densities exhibi~t nowhere marked increases with increasing distance from the sun. For the stars at large, they are close to unity to a limiting distance of 2500 parsecs. The most notable negative density gradients are found for the F stars. The spectral density-curves indicate that there exist marked variations in the shape of the general luminosity function over the first 500 parsecs