This cluster was discovered in 2006 by Dirk Froebrich, Aleks Scholz, and C.J. Raftery within a systematic survey using the 2MASS infrared telescope, and listed under number 1767, or FSR 1767, in their catalog (Froebrich et.al. 2007), who already classified it as a globular cluster candidate. Its nature as a globular cluster was established by Bonatto et.al. (2007) on the grounds of 2MASS CMDs, proper motion, and detailed structural analysis.
The authors found that this is the nearest of all Milky Way Globular Clusters! It is situated at a distance of only about 4,900 light-years in the direction of heavily crowded Milky Way in southernmore parts of constellation Scorpius, where its interstellar absorption amounts to about 6.2 +/- 0.3 mag. This fact, together with the heavily star "polluted" background, helped ot to escape previous discovery. FSR 1767 is probably a "Palomar type" globular cluster with an estimated absolute magnitude of -4.7 M_v, similar to the low-mass globulars AL 3, Palomar 13, or AM 4. A comparison shows that it contains perhaps about only one tenth of the stars of bright nearby globular cluster M4.
As this cluster was detected with the 2MASS telescope, and is the fourth globular cluster detected with this device, it would be straigtforward to name it 2MASS-GC03, alternatively (compare 2MASS-GC01 or Hurt 1, 2MASS-GC02 or Hurt 2, and FSR 1735 or 2MASS-GC03).
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