A search for candidate old open clusters: Preliminary photometry of the Saurer et al. clusters

We have performed V and I CCD observations of the previously unstudied open cluster candidates proposed by Saurer et al. in 1994. Five of these clusters are found to be true clusters, with ages older than 1 Gyr, based on the "morphological age index" of Janes & Phelps, while effects of differential extinction make the identification of another as a true cluster inconclusive. The derived ages of the clusters range between a low of about 1 Gyr to a high of 7-8 Gyr for cluster A. Based on the derived parameters, cluster A is one of the oldest and the most distant of any Galactic open clusters studied to date.