show such a step-like trend for regions in the direction of stronger FIR emission when compared with the behavior of the cumulative distribution in regions with lower FIR emission.

It is also possible to compare the measured behavior of the cumulative star counts with that “predicted” in absence of localized extinction effects by using a model for the stellar distribution in the Galaxy for the same Milky Way locations as sampled here. A very successful and intuitively simple stellar distribution model was produced by Bahcall & Soneira (1984) and is available on-line[^1]. We calculated predicted star counts for the locations of the extracted data from the USNO-A2.0 catalog using the version of the model retrieved in December 1998. The locations are listed in Table 1. We compared the predicted cumulative star counts with the actual star counts. The comparisons are shown in Figure 3 and show no significant deviations from the predicted behavior.

The exercises shown in Figs. 2 and 3 indicate that the stellar distributions are not influenced by the material producing the FIR emission. The conclusion is, therefore, that this material is either extremely nearby, so that all the stars are affected in the same manner, or that 