Star clusterings in the Carina complex: photometry of NGC 3324 and Loden 165^*

¹ Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universitá di Padova, vicolo dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
² European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwartzschild-Str 2, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany
³ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK e-mail: fpapat@eso.org; holger@maths.ed.ac.uk

Corresponding author: G. Carraro, carraro@pd.astro.it

Received: 4 December 2000
Accepted: 27 February 2001

Abstract

We report on UBVRI photometry of two fields in the region of the young open cluster NGC 3324. One of our fields covers the core region, while the other is closer to the tidal radius of the cluster. Our study provides the first CCD photometry of NGC 3324. We find that the cluster is very young and probably contains several pre Main Sequence (MS) stars. 25 members are identified on the basis of their position in the vs. diagram. We investigate the relation of the red super-giant HD 92207 with NGC 3324, suggesting that it probably does not belong to the cluster. Our second field is close to Loden 165, a possible cluster of stars that has never been studied so far. We show that this object is a probable open cluster, much older than NGC 3324 and much closer to the Sun.