DISTANCE DETERMINATION TO THE MOLECULAR CLOUDS IN THE GALACTIC ANTI-CENTER REGION

We conducted a deep CCD observations in V band to obtain stellar density distribution and to determine the distances toward two molecular clouds with anomalous velocity in the Galactic anti-center region. Star count method based on the linear programming technique was applied to the CCD photometric data. We found two prominent peaks at distances of around 1.4 and 2.7 kpc. It is found that the first peak coincides well with stellar density enhancement of B8-A0 stars and the second one with the outer Perseus arm. The effect of the choice of the luminosity function is discussed. The stellar number density distribution is used to derive the distances to the molecular clouds and the visual extinctions caused by the clouds. We found that two molecular clouds are located almost at the same distance of about 1.1 $\pm$ 0.1 kpc, and the peak extinctions caused by the clouds are about 2.2 $\pm$ 0.3 mag in V band.