We report on the detection of Cepheids and the first distance measurement to the spiral galaxy NGC 1326-A , a member of the Fornax cluster of galaxies .
We have employed data obtained with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope .
Over a 49 day interval , a total of twelve V -band ( F555W ) and eight I -band ( F814W ) epochs of observation were obtained .
Two photometric reduction packages , ALLFRAME and DoPHOT , have been employed to obtain photometry measures from the three Wide Field CCDs .
Variability analysis yields a total of 17 Cepheids in common with both photometry datasets , with periods ranging between 10 and 50 days .
Of these 14 Cepheids with high-quality lightcurves are used to fit the V and I period-luminosity relations and derive apparent distance moduli , assuming a Large Magellanic Cloud distance modulus \mu _ { LMC } = 18.50 \pm 0.10 mag and color excess E ( B - V ) = 0.10 mag .
Assuming A ( V ) /E ( V - I ) = 2.45 , the DoPHOT data yield a true distance modulus to NGC 1326-A of \mu _ { o } = 31.36 \pm 0.17 ( random ) \pm 0.13 ( systematic ) mag , corresponding to a distance of 18.7 \pm 1.5 ( random ) \pm 1.2 ( systematic ) Mpc .
The derived distance to NGC 1326-A is in good agreement with the distance derived previously to NGC 1365 , another spiral galaxy member of the Fornax cluster .
However the distances to both galaxies are significantly lower than to NGC 1425 , a third Cepheid calibrator in the outer parts of the cluster .