This is a collection of genuine photographs of the galaxies that make up our Local Supercluster. They’ve been shrunk down (albeit not to scale) and roughly positioned in relation to each other.
Clustering of galaxies appears to be the norm rather than the exception; roughly three-quarters of all galaxies are found in clusters. Many tiny clusters of galaxies, like as the Local Group, are seen in close proximity. The Virgo Cluster, a massive cluster of 2000 galaxies, approximately 65 million light years away. The Local Supercluster is named for the proximity of about 50 nearby tiny groups of galaxies to the Virgo cluster, which suggests that they all form one vast flattened cluster of clusters.
The Local Supercluster is frequently referred to as the Virgo Supercluster since it is centered around the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
Its equatorial plane is nearly parallel to our own Galactic plane.
With a diameter of nearly 100 million light years, our Supercluster has a combined mass of about 1015 times that of the Sun.
The Local Group, which is located on one of the Local Supercluster’s edges, appears to be rotating around its core at a rate of about 400 kilometers per second.
In This Article...
Is the Virgo Cluster heading our way?
Messier 90 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, which includes about 1,200 galaxies. Messier 90’s blueshift, according to astronomers, is caused by the cluster’s enormous bulk, which accelerates the galaxies inside it to high velocities and puts them on strange orbits. According to the Hubble statement, the galaxies’ strange paths drive them both towards and away from us over time.
According to a Hubble official, the Virgo Cluster is moving away from us, but certain of the galaxies inside it, particularly Messier 90, are traveling faster than the cluster as a whole. As a result, we view the galaxy travelling toward us from Earth, despite the fact that other galaxies in the same cluster appear to be moving away from us at great speeds.
Infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light are all used in this Hubble image of Messier 90. The image is set out with a staircase-shaped hole at the top because the camera used to take the image was made up of four light detectors with overlapping fields of vision one with a higher magnification than the other three.
More Hubble photos of Messier objects, which were all discovered by astronomer Charles Messier, can be found here.
What is the size of the Virgo Supercluster?
On a bigger scale, distance is something that is quite difficult for most of us to adequately picture in our brains, and this is simply a biological limitation. The routes you take frequently such as to work or school are imprinted in your mind, and you have a good sense of how far it is and how long it will take you to complete them.
Our planet has a radius of around 6,400 kilometers, yet we never travel these great distances across the globe, making it difficult to judge how big Earth is in contrast to human objects. But now we know that we can zoom out of our quaint, picturesque blue dot and see that the Earth is part of a solar system that is about 2 light-years across (consider that light travels at 300 million m/sec for just 8 minutes to reach Earth, so consider traveling this distance for 2 solid years), with planets hundreds of times its size revolving around a star that could swallow them all up several times over. Zooming out, we can see our stellar neighborhood, which is a cluster of star systems that spans 30 light years.
We have the famous Milky Way galaxy if we widen our field of view even further. It measures a whopping a hundred thousand light years in diameter (meaning, it takes light 100,000 years to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other). We can imagine what this looks like because it’s simple to create the cool graphics that you’re probably familiar with, but actually comprehending such a distance is an almost unfathomable feat for the human mind. (I believe that ‘Scale of the Universe’ is the best interactive software for learning about distance on the internet.) Look it up here). Today, though, I’d like you to think about the next level of star structures, which are made up of galaxy clusters. We are part of the ‘Local Group,’ which is a cluster of nearby galaxies, such as M31 (or Andromeda), that span around 10 million light-years.
But what we’re actually interested in is taking it a step farther. The massive cosmic structure I’m talking about is 110 million light years across, encompassing 100 other galaxy clusters including the Sculptor Group, the Maffei Group, and the M81 cluster, and holding nearly 100 billion times the volume of our galaxy (a total of 47,000 galaxies). The Virgo Supercluster is its name.
What is the location of the Virgo galaxy cluster?
The stars of the Big Dipper can be used to find Arcturus and Spica. The arc of the Dipper’s handle forms a curving line that leads to Arcturus and eventually Spica. These are the brightest stars along this imaginary line, and they’re easy to see even in less-than-ideal lighting.
With Arcturus and Spica, Denebola, Beta Leonis, forms a roughly equilateral triangle. It marks the tail of the celestial Lion and is located east of Regulus, Leo’s brightest star. The Sickle, a backward question mark formed by some of Leo’s brightest stars and resembling the Lion’s head and mane, is easily identified. Regulus is the brightest and easternmost of the three stars that form a triangle on the other side of Leo, while Denebola is the brightest and easternmost of the three stars that form a triangle on the other side of Leo.
Denebola has a visual magnitude of 2.1 and is a white A-type main sequence star. It’s also a member of the Great Diamond asterism, which includes Arcturus, Spica, and Cor Caroli, the brightest star in the Canes Venatici constellation. Between Denebola and the brighter Regulus, five other famous Messier galaxies can be found: Messier 65, Messier 66, Messier 105, Messier 95, and Messier 96.
The Spring Triangle’s Vindemiatrix, Epsilon Virginis, is near the center. With an apparent magnitude of 2.8, it is a yellow G-type massive star. After Spica and Porrima, it is the third brightest star in Virgo.
In the region between Vindemiatrix and Denebola, the Virgo Cluster galaxies can be viewed. The spring is the greatest time of year to observe galaxies from northern latitudes.
Is the Virgo Cluster home to the Local Group?
Our cosmos contains hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of galaxies of various forms and sizes. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is a long way away for most of them. Most are too far away to see without binoculars or a telescope at billions of light-years away. Our Local Group, on the other hand, is unique. Within the wide cosmos, it is made up of our nearby galaxies. The galaxies in the Local Group are all within a 5 million light-year radius of us. The diameter of the Local Group as a whole is around 10 million light-years. In the Local Group, our Milky Way is one of three big galaxies. However, it is not the most massive of the Local Group galaxies. The Andromeda galaxy is what I’m referring to. The Triangulum galaxy, the third and smallest of the three big galaxies, is the smallest of the three. The Local Group also contains about 50 dwarf galaxies. So, in our universe, is the Local Group considered a huge structure? Both yes and no. Continue reading to find out more.
The Local Group galaxies are relatively close to us on the enormous astronomical distance scale. Instead of billions of light-years, they’re simply millions. As a result, several Local Group galaxies can be seen without a telescope from a dark location.
According to the diagram above, our Milky Way galaxy is in the core of the Local Group. Of course, it doesn’t, but the image is set up in that way to honor our human perspective. The Local Group, on the other hand, does have a gravitational center. The Andromeda Galaxy is located between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
Our Local Group is also on the margins of a massive supercluster of galaxies known as the Virgo Supercluster, according to astronomers.
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What’s bigger than the Local Group?
A group of galaxies known as the Local Group. It spans a distance of 10 million light-years. However, gravity has an endless range, despite being the weakest of the four fundamental forces of existence. It’s no surprise, then, that astronomers detect groupings of galaxies on both small and big scales when looking out into space. They believe that groups like the Local Group are part of far larger structures.
The Virgo Supercluster contains at least 100 galaxy groupings and clusters, including our Local Group. This massive supercluster, often known as our “local” supercluster, is estimated to measure 110 million light-years in diameter.
In 2014, astronomers reported that the Virgo Supercluster itself could be a member of a larger structure known as the Laniakea Supercluster. They estimated that the bigger supercluster consists of 100,000 galaxies spread across 520 million light-years. Astronomers at the time identified this massive supercluster as one of several such structures found in space.
However, a group of astronomers discovered a few years later that the galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster are not gravitationally bound. So, rather than maintaining itself as a bound item, they predicted that this cluster would spread over time.
Will it be successful? We still don’t know for sure. What we do know is that gravity is at work throughout our cosmos, forming galaxies in space. Our Local Group is simply one example of how galaxies tend to gather – although one that we find fascinating.
Big, bigger, biggest?
The Local Group of galaxies is made up of three major galaxies the Andromeda Galaxy (largest), our Milky Way Galaxy (second largest), and the Triangulum Galaxy (third largest) as well as 50 or so dwarf galaxies.
Is the Milky Way a Virgo Cluster member?
It’s time to broaden your horizons and study the Universe’s greatest structures: superclusters, which are huge groups of galaxies. There is nothing in the Universe that is bigger. The Virgo Supercluster is the supercluster in which we reside. It’s a massive cluster of over a million galaxies that stretches across a 110 million light-year swath of space.
Our Sun is one of the Milky Way’s members, and the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, a collection of galaxies. The Milky Way, Andromeda, and the Triangulum Galaxy are all huge spiral galaxies, with a few hundred dwarf galaxies thrown in for good measure. The Virgo Cluster has several members, including the Local Group. This galaxy cluster spans 15 million light-years and contains 1200-2000 galaxies. The Virgo Cluster is thus merely one of the Virgo Supercluster’s clusters.
Although astronomers realized we were among a supercluster of galaxies in the 1950s, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Virgo Supercluster’s shape was sketched out; it has a flattened disk, similar to our own galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is an outlying group of the Virgo Supercluster, and our Virgo Cluster is one of them.
In Virgo, how many deep sky objects are there?
Virgo is recognized for its galaxies, if we’re being honest. There are 200 deep-sky objects brighter than 13th magnitude in the constellation. Only one is a globular cluster, NGC 5634 (magnitude 9.5).
Are galaxies in close proximity to one another?
As stars collide with merging supermassive black holes, some will be blasted out of the galaxy, while others will be destroyed. And both galaxies’ delicate spiral structures will be shattered as they merge into a single, massive, elliptical galaxy. However, as terrifying as this seems, such a process is a normal aspect of galactic evolution.
This coming collision has been known to astronomers for some time. This is based on the relative directions and speeds of our and Andromeda’s galaxies. But, more crucially, astronomers observe galaxy collisions on a regular basis when looking out into the universe.
Galaxies circle around a common center and are kept together by mutual gravitation. Interactions between galaxies, particularly between big and satellite galaxies, are fairly common. This is frequently caused by galaxies drifting too close together, to the point that the satellite galaxy’s gravity attracts one of the massive galaxy’s primary spiral arms.
In other situations, the satellite galaxy’s course may cross with that of the main galaxy. Collisions could result in mergers if neither galaxy has enough momentum to continue moving after the collision. If one of the colliding galaxies is substantially larger than the other, the larger galaxy will remain mostly intact and preserve its shape, while the smaller galaxy will be shredded apart and absorbed by the larger galaxy.
What is the Virgo Cluster’s mass?
The Virgo cluster (called as such because it is observed in the direction of the constellation Virgo) is the largest and closest galaxy cluster to the Local Group, located at a distance of 16 Mpc and spans 8 degrees across the sky. In reality, the Local Group is frequently thought to be in the Virgo cluster’s outskirts.
The cluster contains on the order of 2,000 galaxies, with many more spiral galaxies than is expected for a cluster of this size, with a mass of around 100,000 billion solar masses.
The cluster comprises three clearly distinguishable sub-clusters (centered on M87, M86, and M49), indicating that it is still forming. The cluster’s X-ray halo has an uneven distribution, which supports this theory.
The Virgo cluster’s mass is so large that it has a major impact on the motions of most galaxies in its vicinity, drawing them towards it (the ‘Virgo-centric flow’). Despite the fact that the Local Group is now receding from the cluster, the Virgo cluster’s mass is so great that the Local Group is anticipated to gradually slow down and reverse course, finally joining the cluster.