  e present wide field deep UBVI photometry for the previously unstudied open
cluster NGC 4852 down to a limiting magnitude $I\sim24$, obtained from
observations taken with the Wide Field Imager camera on-board the MPG/ESO 2.2m
telescope at La Silla (ESO, Chile). These data are used to obtain the first
estimate of the cluster basic parameters, to study the cluster spatial
extension by means of star counts, and to derive the Luminosity (LF) and Mass
Function (MF). The cluster radius turns out to be $5.0\pm1.0$ arcmin. The
cluster emerges clearly from the field down to V=20 mag. At fainter magnitud
es, it is completely confused with the general Galactic disk field. The stars
inside this region define a young open cluster (200 million years old) 1.1 kpc
far from the Sun (m-M = 11.60, E(B-V) = 0.45). The Present Day Mass Functions
(PDMF) from the $V$ photometry is one of the most extended in mass insofar
obtained, and can be represented as a power-law with a slope $\alpha =
2.3\pm0.3$ and (the Salpeter (1955) MF in this notation has a slope $\alpha =
2.35$), in the mass range $3.2 \leq \frac{m}{m_{\odot}} \leq 0.6$. Below this
mass, the MF cannot be considered as representative of the cluster MF, as the
cluster merges with the field and therefore the MF is the result of the
combined effect of strong irregularities in the stellar background and
interaction of the cluster with the dense Galactic field. The cluster total
mass at the limiting magnitude results to be 2570$\pm$210 M$_{\odot}$.
