This poster captures 25 of my favorite lenticular galaxies.

The word Lenticular comes from the Latin and has its origins relating to lens, particular the lens of an eye.  For some reason, the public use of this word over time was 10x higher in the 1950s and 1960s than it is today.

Lenticular galaxies, designated S0, are one of the toughest DSO types to identify.  In galaxy morphology, they are a hybrid between an elliptical and a spiral.  Like spiral galaxies, lenticular galaxies have a disk.  Like elliptical galaxies, lenticular galaxies lack arm structure and have little gas.  

Many times, these features are not definitive and it is hard to determine if a galaxy is spiral, lenticular or elliptical.  Examples of this are M64 and M86.  Many times you will find the same object classified differently from different sources.  For these reasons, plus the poor quality of most existing lenticular galaxy "lists", this poster was one of the most difficult for me to assemble. 

Sometimes lenticulars can have significant dust lanes or bar structures, which makes the object easier to identify as a lenticular galaxy and not an elliptical.  To make this poster, the object has to be clearly seen as a lenticular in my eyes.      

The lenticular classification type was introduced by Hubble as a transitional stage between spiral and elliptical galaxies.  But with the passage of time, it is clear that it is not that simple.  I believe that lenticulars are their own unique galaxy type with formation mechanisms that we do not yet fully understand.  

Each of the object images on this poster has been posted to my Astrobin account.  The links to each individual image are below in case you wanted to see more detail and a description of each object:

Face-on:
NGC 2681
NGC 524
NGC 7187
NGC 6340
NGC 7377

Barred:
NGC 4643
NGC 6548
NGC 4477
NGC 2859
NGC 1452

Inner Lens:
NGC 1023
NGC 7457
NGC 1316
NGC 5602
NGC 3414

Dust Lanes:
NGC 4429
NGC 4526
NGC 2911
NGC 3593
NGC 2655

Edge-on:
M102
NGC 3115
NGC 5084
NGC 4111
NGC 7332

All of the above objects are contained in my Astrobin Lenticular Galaxy Collection.

If you enjoyed this compilation poster, please see my collection of 80 such posters here.  The collection includes posters such as Cars of the Cosmos, Worst DSO Nicknames, and the Complete Messier Catalogue.

Finally, somehow this poster was platesolved by Astrobin.  Don't ask me how that happened!