In Astronomy 101, we have come to learn that Earth belongs to the Solar System, and the Solar System belongs to the Milky Way. For astronomy experts, they are familiar with the fact that the Milky Way is included in the group of more than 54 galaxies called the Local Group, which in turn, is part of the Virgo or Local Supercluster. Local Supercluster is thought to contain over 47,000 galaxies or at least 100 galaxy groups. However a new map appears to debunk the limits and boundaries of the universe.
A group of astronomers led by R. Brent Tully of the Institute for Astronomy, a research unit within the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, charted a new vast and massive region encompassing 100,000 galaxies, and published their findings on the International Weekly Journal of Science. The paper is made available on Nature.com. According to the study, there is a a new way of defining superclusters in a manner conforming or corresponding to the comparative velocities of galaxies. They called it "Laniakea".
ScienceDaily.com said that the word Laniakea is Hawaiian for "immeasurable heaven." The root words "lani" means "heaven" and "akea," which means "spacious", "immense" or "immeasurable". The name was proposed by associate professor of Hawaiian Language Nawa'a Napoleon, at Kapiolani Community College, in recognition of Polynesian navigators who used their celestial knowledge to navigate the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
In an interview with National Geographic, Tully said about the discovery, "Seeing a map gives you a sense of place. For me, having that sense of place and seeing the relationship of things is very important in terms of understanding it."
Reuters described Laniakea as a celestial cluster stretched out over 520 million light-years. A light-year is the distance that light, which moves at about 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km/s), travels in one year, or approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion km). The Virgo supercluster, previously defined as our home supercluster estimated to be spanning some 100 million light-years , is now considered a part joined, i.e., an appendage, to the larger Laniakea.
Laniakea is bordered by the neighboring Shapley Supercluster, Hercules Supercluster, Coma Supercluster and Perseus-Pisces Supercluster. However, an indefinite but emphatically large number of distance measurements must be done to mark out the far edges of these superclusters and Laniakea.
"We haven't seen the edges of our neighbors and we haven't seen far enough to understand what's causing this full motion of our galaxy," Tully said.
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