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Welcome to Laniakea, your home - gigantic super-cluster of galaxies that contains our own Milky Way containing one hundred quadrillion suns


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Welcome to Laniakea, your home: Stunning new 3D map reveals gigantic super-cluster of galaxies that contains our own Milky Way

 

Word means 'immeasurable heaven' in Hawaiian

Structure is 500 million light years across

Contains 100,000 galaxies and the mass of a hundred quadrillion suns

Around Laniakea are four neighbouring superclusters known as Shapley, Hercules, Coma and Perseus-Pisces

First supercluster to have its size mapped by astronomers.

 

 

It may not be stamped in your passport, but everyone on Earth is now officially a citizen of Laniakea.

That is the name scientists have given the gigantic super-cluster of galaxies that contains our own Milky Way, which is revealed in a stunning new 3D animation.

The word means 'immeasurable heaven' in Hawaiian - an appropriate description for a structure 500 million light years across that contains 100,000 galaxies and the mass of a hundred quadrillion suns.

 

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/03/1409765229275_wps_1_National_News_and_Picture.jpg

 

 

And Laniakea itself forms just one corner of the observable universe.

 

Scientists have long-known that galaxies are not distributed randomly but congregate together in clusters.

On the largest scales, galaxies are strung out like pearls, forming glowing 'filaments'.

Where these intersect they produce enormous 'superclusters' of galaxies whose motion is affected by gravity.

 

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/03/1409766458682_wps_3_National_News_and_Picture.jpg

 

 

The Milky Way sits near the edge of one such supercluster, the first to have its size mapped by astronomers.

Within Laniakea, galaxies flow inwards towards a region called the Great Attractor, the equivalent of a large gravitational valley.

Around Laniakea are four neighbouring superclusters known as Shapley, Hercules, Coma and Perseus-Pisces.

 

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/03/1409767031749_Image_galleryImage_National_News_and_Picture.JPG http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/03/1409767044932_Image_galleryImage_National_News_and_Picture.JPG

 

 

Dr Brent Tully, from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, led the team of scientists that mapped Laniakea's boundaries from measurements of the velocities of local galaxies.

The researchers compared the galactic flow with that of water in a landscape of hills and valleys, tracing the outer surface of a region where the net-motion of galaxies was inward.

They wrote in the journal Nature: 'We define a supercluster to be the volume within such a surface, and so we are defining the extent of our home supercluster, which we call Laniakea.'

 

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Great article. I find it amazing that we can determine the shape and size of the universe from a single and relatively stationary point. Amazing.

 

Science is cool.

Edited by CygnusGal
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