Milky Way is part of galactic supercluster Laniakea

New findings of astronomers at the University of Hawaii presented in Nature show that the Milky Way is part of a gigantic supercluster of galaxies called Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian. The scientists used a number of telescopes to measure the distances of galaxies to Earth and calculate their peculiar velocities, in order to create a map of the distribution of matter in space. This newly established cosmic map shows the gravitational flows of galaxies, which congregate in clusters and along filaments that are all interconnected in massive superclusters. The existence of these structures has been known for a long time, but their relationships and especially their boundaries were not well defined. Now, the edges of superclusters have been redrawn along the surface where the flows of galaxies start to diverge, similar to water dividing at a watershed. The resulting Laniakea supercluster we call home has a diameter of 500 million lightyears and contains a grand total of 100.000 galaxies with a combined mass of a hundred million billion Suns.

Click here to view the supplementary video, which beautifully illustrates the structure of Laniakea and the flows of its galaxies.


Journal reference: Tully, R. B., Courtois, H., Hoffman, Y., & Pomarède, D. (2014). The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies. Nature513(7516), 71-73.

Image: The Milky Way as seen from the Karakoram Range, Pakistan. Source: Anne Dirkse, Wikimedia Commons.

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