The Virgo Cluster is a tiny cluster of galaxies in the constellation Virgo, with a center distance of 53.8 0.3 Mly (16.5 0.1 Mpc). The cluster is the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which the Local Group (which contains our Milky Way galaxy) is a part. It has around 1,300 (and maybe up to 2,000) member galaxies. The Virgocentric flow is how the Local Group perceives the mass of the Virgo Supercluster. The mass of the Virgo Cluster is estimated to be 1.2.
In This Article...
Are there any galaxies in the constellation Virgo?
There are about a thousand galaxies in the massive Virgo Cluster. M87, the cluster’s most massive member, is shown below center in the central region.
In a cluster, how many galaxies are there?
- They have between 100 to 1,000 galaxies, as well as hot X-ray producing gas and a lot of dark matter. The “Composition” section has more information.
- In the cluster, the distribution of the three components is nearly identical.
- They have a diameter ranging from 1 to 5 Mpc (see 1023 m for distance comparisons).
What constellation is the Virgo Cluster a part of?
The Virgo Cluster is the closest and best-studied greatcluster of galaxies, located in the Virgo constellation at a distance of around 20 million light-years. The Virgo Cluster is the center of the Local Supercluster of galaxies, inside which we (in the Milky Way, in the Local Group) are located. In 1784, Charles Messier noticed an extraordinary concentration of “nebulae” in Virgo; 15 of the 109 “Messier” objects are Virgo Clustergalaxies, the most renowned of which being Messier 87, the gigantic ellipticalgalaxie with the mystery jet. The true nature of the group of nebulae in Virgoas a self-gravitating system of hundreds of galaxies was soon realized after Edwin P. Hubble’s 1923 discovery of Cepheids in M31, and the first systematic investigations of the Virgo Cluster(as it was later called) were carried out by Harlow Shapley and Adelaide Ames. Since then, the Virgo Cluster has been and continues to be of critical importance in extragalactic astronomy: Large numbers of galaxies of different sorts and luminosities can be seen in great detail here, making the cluster both an ideal laboratory for studying galaxies’ systematic features and a vital stepping stone for the cosmological distance scale.
What are the five galaxies that are the closest to us?
The closest galaxies to Earth are listed in order of increasing distance. Many of the distances are simply estimates, and some could be off by as much as 50%. This list’s distance ranking should only be regarded as a guess. The units of measurement are light years (ly).
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.
What is the total number of galaxies?
In 2020, it was projected that the visible Universe has roughly 2 trillion galaxies. Each galaxy is distinct, ranging in size from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of light-years.
What is the greatest galaxy cluster in the universe?
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is currently the best contender for the largest supercluster known in the cosmos, despite astronomers discussing the structure for nearly a decade.
At the 7th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium in 2013, a research team lead by Istvan Horvath of Hungary’s National University of Public Service announced the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall.
The researchers had been researching gamma-ray bursts, which astronomers believe are caused by supernovas, or enormous stars that explode at the end of their lives. Because massive stars tend to concentrate in denser neighborhoods, gamma-ray bursts are regarded to be a useful indicator of where huge amounts of matter reside in the cosmos. Horvath and his colleagues discovered gamma-rays concentrated in the direction of the Hercules and Corona Borealis constellations, roughly 10 billion light-years away.
However, the origins of the massive building remain a mystery. This structure looked to contradict a cosmological principle, or how the cosmos started and evolved, according to Horvath. The underlying concept states that matter should be uniform at a big enough scale, however the cluster is not uniform.
“This edifice appears to be far too large to be real. Even as a coauthor, I have my reservations “In a 2014 press release, Jon Hakkila, an astronomy researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, stated. However, he said that there was a very slim probability less than 1% that the researchers spotted a random number of gamma-rays at that place.
“As a result, we believe the structure exists,” he continued. “Other structures, such as the Sloan Great Wall and the Huge Large Quasar Group…, appear to defy universal homogeneity. As a result, there may be others, some of which may be larger. Only time will tell if this is true.”
The existence of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is “doubtful at best,” according to a research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2020, which points out that it could be a statistical blip in very sophisticated data. However, in an article published in the same journal in 2020, the same team that hypothesized the presence of the supercluster backed up their findings.
Why are galaxies grouped together?
Galaxy clusters are thought to form when clumps of dark matter and their accompanying galaxies are forced together by gravity to create groups of dozens of galaxies, which then merge to form clusters of hundreds, even thousands of galaxies, according to astronomers.
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.