We employed the ESO MPI wide-field camera and obtained deep images in the VI _ { C } pass-bands in the region of the IC 2944/2948 complex ( l \sim 294 \aas@@fstack { \circ } 8 ; b \sim - 1 \aas@@fstack { \circ } 6 ) , and complemented them with literature and archival data .
We used this material to derive the photometric , spectroscopic and kinematic properties of the brightest ( V < 16 ) stars in the region .
The VI deep photometry on the other end , helped us to unravel the lower main sequence of a few , possibly physical , star groups in the area .

Our analysis confirmed previous suggestions that the extinction toward this line of sight follows the normal law ( R _ { V } = 3.1 ) .
We could recognize B-type stars spread in distance from a few hundred pc to at least 2 kpc .
We found two young groups ( age \sim 3 Myr ) located respectively at about 2.3 and 3.2 kpc from the Sun .
They are characterized by a significant variable extinction ( E _ { B - V } ranging from 0.28 to 0.45 mag ) , and host a significant pre-main sequence population .
We computed the initial mass functions for these groups and obtained slopes \Gamma from -0.94 to -1.02 ( e _ { \Gamma } = 0.3 ) , in a scale where the classical Salpeter law is -1.35 .
We estimated the total mass of both main stellar groups in \sim 1100 and \sim 500 M _ { \odot } , respectively .
Our kinematic analysis indicated that both groups of stars deviate from the standard rotation curve of the Milky Way , in line with literature results for this specific Galactic direction .

Finally , along the same line of sight we identified a third group of early-type stars located at \sim 8 kpc from the Sun .
This group might be located in the far side of the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm .