This galaxy is listed as AM 0644-741 in Halton Arp's and Barry Madore's catalog of southern peculiar galaxies. This is one of the most easily visible true ring galaxies. It is amazing how the eyepiece view practically mirrors the Hubble Space Telescope image. All three sketched galaxies have a brightness of around 14–15^m with the ring galaxy PGC 19481 being the brightest. They are neither particularly faint nor particularly bright. PGC 19454 on the left of my drawing lacks a distinct core. PGC 19455 is located to the lower right in my dwaing. It is slightly larger and features a tiny non-stellar core and faint outer regions. The real highlight however is undoubtedly the ring. It is clearly visible with three brighter sections discernible within it. It is a sight that I believe makes every deep-sky observer's heart skip a beat.

There are a few other similar galaxies in the sky. Perhaps the most famous is the Cartwheel Galaxy (PGC 2248). While it is technically observable from Central Europe it likely offers little reward. From the Southern Hemisphere under ideal conditions and using a 60 cm telescope the eyepiece impression is very much like a photograph. Arp 147 is also primarily a southern target. After an attempt from Ágasvár I consider it hopeless from Hungary. I had already deemed Arp 146 hopeless based on photographs and catalog data. Though it would certainly be worth a try in the future. We did not see the ring of PGC 29529 from Namibia with a 60 cm telescope. I know of one truly northern ring galaxy: PGC 41524. Based on catalog data it also appears hopeless. Of course I will try it in the future at some point...

Comparison with the photograph

You can see the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image on the left made with the ACS camera along with my 16" inverted drawing rotated and cropped to sort of match the Hubble frame.