This figure was made in collaboration with my friend Dr. Arthur Congdon. It is a heuristic figure representing the gravitational bending of light. It was made using Povray on a Linux machine. This video is best viewed in high quality mode (the link underneath the video).
I agree the cross does seem to require a barred galaxy as a lens.
The cross points seem too far away from the bar in the lensing galaxy, however, like they should all be positioned close to where the lensing galaxy's bar crosses its galactic core.
I've seen no really convincing ideas to explain the cross formation in detail yet. Right now I'm guessing that the lensing galaxy could be a tilted planar gravitational quadrupole, a couple of simple graviton concepts motivating that view.
CACBCCCU 1 year ago