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Description
We present an optical study of four 45'x45' fields centered ~0.5{deg} east, west, north, and south of the Orion Nebula Cluster center. We have measured V and I_C_ photometry for ~5000 stars, and U photometry for ~1600 of these. We have obtained spectral classifications for ~300 of the stars with UVI_C_ photometry plus an additional ~200 stars located outside the area of our photometric survey. Dereddened photometry allows us to investigate the evidence for circumstellar accretion disks from excess emission at ultraviolet wavelengths, as well as the mass and age distributions of our sample. We find ~230 active accretion disk candidates and estimate the accretion disk fraction at >~40%. We use the magnitude of the ultraviolet excess to infer disk accretion rates. The mass accretion rate (dM/dt) decreases slowly with age over the limited age range spanned by our data, 1-3Myr, and increases slowly with mass over the limited mass range 0.2-1.2 M_{sun}_.
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