We present a study aimed at clarifying the birthplace for 43 massive O-type field stars. In this first paper we present the observational part: a search for stellar clusters near the target stars. We derive stellar density maps at two different resolving scales, viz. ~0.25 pc and ~1.0 pc from NTT and TNG imaging and the 2MASS catalogue. These scales are typical for cluster sizes. The main result is that the large majority of the O-type field population are isolated stars: only 12% (5 out of 43) of the O-type field stars is found to harbour a small-scale stellar cluster. We review the literature and aim at characterizing the stellar field of each O-type field star with the emphasis on star formation and the presence of known young stellar clusters. An analysis of the result of this paper and a discussion of the O-type field population as products of a dynamical ejection event is presented in an accompanying paper.
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Wit et al. (2004) studied this question.
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