NGC 1326 is situated 63 million light years away in Fornax. In 1999 HST did a partial image that only covered the very central area. There are no clear amateur images. The Hubble team studied the nuclear ring which has obvious star formation. They concluded that it was unusual for a Lenticular galaxy but apparently absent a deeper wider image that covered the entire galaxy they classified the galaxy as S0 lenticular. This image has 14 hours of luminance and covers the whole galaxy. There are obvious outer spiral arms which are loose and faint as well as an outer ring in addition to the nuclear ring. We conclude that this is actually a ringed spiral galaxy which is in transition. We think it should be classified as SBo.
Our thanks to our friend Maxim Usatov for reviewing the image and galaxy morphology.
Imaged in LRGB on our Planewave CDK 1000 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image Processing Mike Selby and Mark Hanson