a deep dive into the cosmos

In the sky, the gravitational lens SDSS J1038+4849, which has an apparent size about the size of Saturn, has been a work in progress for nearly the entire imaging season for me. Only excellent weather has been acceptable for capturing this, as the sky needs to be extremely dark and the seeing conditions good for it to be worth photographing. Under these criteria, a little over 35 hours of data was collected using LRGB filters, as only a handful of potential observation nights were of high enough quality for my telescope to be pointed below the Big Dipper to capture this "empty" region of the sky.

A gravitational lens is formed when the light from background galaxies passes through a foreground galaxy cluster. The cluster's gravitational field is so massive that it bends even light. The Einstein Ring, named after Albert Einstein, is the same phenomenon, though in this case, the light does not form a perfect ring but rather arcs around the galaxy cluster. The brightness of these arcs reaches a magnitude of 24, so abysmally dim that I highly doubted I could pull this off. The field also contains a vast number of other galaxies ranging from deep red to bluish hues. It's interesting to see that these often overlooked background galaxies display a range of sizes, shapes and colors that seem endless. I also find it fascinating that you can point your telescope at a seemingly empty patch of sky, and with enough exposure, you realize it is filled with countless intriguing objects. The second image provides a comparison with the Hubble Space Telescope’s photograph of the same object.