The isophotal geometry, studied in detail by several authors (Carter 1987; Nieto and Bender 1989; Nieto et al. 1992; Michard and Marchal 1994) shows a variety of trends: isophotes are disky in the outer regions (outside of 20") and turn mildly boxy in the intermediate ones (inside 5"). At the same radii abrupt variations in the PA of the isophotal major axis are also observed. This evidences together with the absence of obvious dust features which could mislead the interpretation (Veron-Cetty and Veron 1988; Goudfrooij and de Jong 1995; van Dokkum and Franx 1995) led Nieto et al. (1992) to suggest that NGC 596 can harbour a weak bar similar to that observed in the prototype SB0 galaxy UGC 2656.
Michard and Marchal (1994) suggest instead the existence of a peculiar disk. Surprisingly enough, no structure is listed for this galaxy in the survey by Ebneter et al. (1988). Schweizer and Seitzer (1992) found a fine-structure parameter sigma = 4.60 and from the colors concluded that substantial rejuvenation of the galaxy must have occured.
The Laplacian image of NGC 596 turns out to be rather complex, the most striking feature being a rather disrupted asymmetric disk at PA = 50° i.e. coincident with the photometric axis. This disk extends from about 20" to 65" in the SW one. Inside this region there is a tiny stellar disk (3" in radius) at PA = 118°. The existence of this disk is confirmed by the high-resolution HST data presented in Lauer et al. (1995). Even though they failed to detect the disk, from their fig. 6 it is apparent that in the inner 3", the isophotes turn disky and the PA of the major axis twists toward approx. 120°. Two symmetric "blobs" laying at the same PA of the inner disk and at a distance of about 14" are also visible in a zoomed Laplacian image in the R-band, observed with the NTT EFOSC. They may, however, be an artifact introduced by the strong twisting. The overall Laplacian morphology is very similar to that of NGC 3384 (Busarello et al. 1996). As expected, no dust features are detected.
