Polarization angle vs. distance of the foreground stars found within a diameter of 1° around BRC 17, BRC 18, and the Heiles stars found within a diameter of 9° around λ-Ori (upper panel). Degree of polarization vs. distance for the same stars (lower panel). The dashed gray line corresponds to a distance of 392 pc in both panels. The distances are calculated from the HIPPARCOS parallax measurements taken from van Leeuwen (2007) and adopted from Bailer-Jones et al. (2021). The gray circles show the bright Tycho stars behind the cloud. The distances for the Tycho stars are taken from Bailer-Jones et al. (2021).