Virgo Supercluster facts for kids
The Virgo Supercluster (also called the Local Supercluster) is a huge group of galaxies. It's like a giant city of galaxies! Our own Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, is part of it.
This supercluster contains at least 100 different galaxy clusters and groups. It stretches across an amazing 110 million light-years of space. The Virgo Supercluster is just one of millions of these huge superclusters found in the part of the universe we can see.
How We Discovered It
Scientists first noticed something special about the area around the Virgo constellation way back in 1863. Astronomers William and John Herschel were mapping out fuzzy objects called "nebulae" (which we now know are mostly galaxies). They saw many more of these objects in the direction of Virgo.
In the 1950s, some scientists thought this might be a very large structure, like a giant galaxy made of galaxies. They called it the "Local Supercluster." For a while, people debated if it was a real structure or just a random grouping of galaxies that looked connected.
The mystery was solved in the late 1970s and early 1980s. New surveys measured how fast galaxies were moving away from us (called redshift). These surveys showed that galaxies in this area were indeed flattened into a large, connected shape. This proved the Local Supercluster was real!
What It Looks Like Inside
In 1982, a scientist named R. Brent Tully described the Virgo Supercluster's shape. He found it has two main parts:
- A flat, disk-like part that holds about two-thirds of its bright galaxies.
- A round, cloud-like area (called a halo) that contains the other one-third of the galaxies.
The flat disk is very thin, only about 3 million light-years thick. It's much longer than it is wide, like a very stretched-out oval.
In 2003, new data helped astronomers compare our Local Supercluster to others. They found that the Virgo Supercluster is a "poor" supercluster. This means it doesn't have a very dense center. It has one rich galaxy cluster in the middle, surrounded by long lines of galaxies and smaller groups.
Our own Local Group of galaxies is located on the edge of the Virgo Supercluster. We are part of a small line of galaxies that stretches from the Fornax Cluster to the Virgo Cluster. The Virgo Supercluster is truly enormous! It's about 7,000 times bigger than our Local Group. It's also 100 billion times larger than our own Milky Way galaxy.
See also
In Spanish: Supercúmulo de Virgo para niños
