BV photometry of Palomar 12

The overall zero points of our V magnitudes and B-V colors appear to be known to about +/-0.02mag and +/-0.01mag, and our magnitude- and color-scale errors are probably controlled to <0.01mag. Pal 12's main sequence shows an excess fringe of stars along its red edge which are probably binaries; the CM diagram also contains a small number of probable blue stragglers.

The principal result of this paper is that the color-magnitude diagram of Pal 12 is anomalous, in the sense that we cannot fake all of its principal sequences lie near or between those of the well studied and presumably typical Galactic globular clusters 47 Tucanae and M5, even though it lies near or between them in overall heavy-element abundance. The simplest explanation is that Pal 12 is younger than the other two clusters by some 25-30%.