We present optical and infrared photometry for VdB-Hagen 67, an overlooked old open
cluster located at l = 273.76o, b = -0.375o (RA = 09h:26m:45s,
DEC = -51o:16':00'', J2000.0) in the fourth Galactic quadrant,
in the direction of the Vela Molecular Ridge. VdB-Hagen 67 is immersed in a dense stellar
field which is characterized by highly patchy extinction, and AV in the line of sight
to the cluster is larger than 3 mag. The cluster looks symmetric and it clearly stands
out from the general Galactic field. By mean of a star count analysis, both in the
optical and IR, we have estimated that its radius of about 2 arcmin. Before this study
only very general information was available for this cluster, but here we have determined
its fundamental parameters. The age of VdB-Hagen 67, has been estimated both empirically
and with theoretical isochrones, and turns out to be about 1.3 Gyrs. The difficulty to
separate cluster members from interlopers prevented us form estimating its metallicity.
No traces of sub-giant or red giant branch stars are visible in its field-star-decontaminated
CMDs; VdB-Hagen 67 is an old, poorly populated, star cluster on the verge of dissolving
into the general Galactic field.
We derive a heliocentric distance of ~7.5 kpc and a galactocentric distance of
~11.5 kpc. With the exception of FSR 1415 at 8.6 kpc, and with an age of
~2.5 Gyr (Momany et al. 2008), no other old clusters are known so far from the Sun
in this Galactic sector. We argue that in this region of the Galactic plane several other
distant clusters of this age have to exist, but have not been unraveled mainly
because of the significant extinction produced by the dense Vela Molecular Ridge.