Attempt to image gravitational lensing in the MACS J1206 cluster by Callan Jessiman for the Carleton University Astronomy Picture Contest (Spring 2014 edition). 100 minutes of imaging using the T17 telescope from the iTelescope.net network, which is a Planewave 17" CDK with a FLI ProLine PL4710 CCD camera.
The important features are not the bright stars around but the very very dim fluffy features in the very centre. You can see a youtube video of the location and how small and deep the field of view is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fNlS_tzBm4 . The Hubble space telescope has a nice view of it located at:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/25/image/b/format/web_print/The central lensing galaxy barely visible in this images has a redshift of z=0.44, while some of the background dimmer galaxies visible on this image have redshifts down to z=0.47, which means that the blue light emitted is seen as red light on Earth. The distance to these galaxies is roughly 5 billion light years.
See the second version for a comparsion between this picture and Hubble's picture.
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