Where is our galaxy in the universe

And the scientists defined the borders as where the galaxies are consistently diverging:. What happens if we zoom out even further? Even Laniakea and Perseus-Pisces are just one small pocket of the much broader universe. That universe consists of both voids and densely packed superclusters of galaxies.

It looks something like this:. We still don't have detailed maps of every last galaxy supercluster out there. But we now have one for our own home supercluster — and that's certainly a start. Further watching: There's an excellent video from Nature breaking down the team's findings. The stills above come from that video. Further reading: Over at Slate, Phil Plait has a nice breakdown of the study, which was released in September Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.

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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. This is the most detailed map yet of our place in the universe.

Share this story Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share All sharing options Share All sharing options for: This is the most detailed map yet of our place in the universe. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. A new study in Nature finds that the Milky Way is part of a broader supercluster of , galaxies known as Laniakea. Laniakea contains more than , galaxies, stretches million light years across, and looks something like this the Milky Way is just a speck located on one of its fringes on the right : Say hello to Laniakea, our local supercluster Nature Video, based on Tully et al It's hard to wrap one's head around how enormous this is.

The galaxies around us are moving in identifiable patterns Galaxies moving away from us are in red, those moving toward us in blue Nature Video, based on Tully et al That, in turn, let them create a map of the pathways along which all the galaxies are moving and demarcate some boundaries.

There's an especially dense region called "The Great Attractor" in red that's slowly pulling the Milky Way and many other galaxies toward it: Many galaxies in Laniakea are being pulled toward the "Great Attractor" Nature Video, based on Tully et al What's interesting is that this structure is much bigger than anyone had realized. In barred spirals, the bar of stars runs through the central bulge. The arms of barred spirals usually start at the end of the bar instead of from the bulge.

Spirals are actively forming stars and comprise a large fraction of all the galaxies in the local universe. Irregular galaxies, which have very little dust, are neither disk-like nor elliptical.

Astronomers often see irregular galaxies as they peer deeply into the universe, which is equivalent to looking back in time. These galaxies are abundant in the early universe, before spirals and ellipticals developed. Aside from these three classic categories, astronomers have also identified many unusually shaped galaxies that seem to be in a transitory phase of galactic development. These include those in the process of colliding or interacting, and those with active nuclei ejecting jets of gas.

In the late s, astronomer Vera Rubin made the surprising discovery of dark matter. She was studying how galaxies spin when she realized the vast spiral Andromeda Galaxy seemed to be rotating strangely.

Some extra non-visible mass, dubbed dark matter, appeared to be holding the galaxy together. She soon discovered that a huge halo of dark matter was present in galaxy after galaxy that she examined. Its invisible and ubiquitous presence affects how stars move within galaxies, how galaxies tug on each other and how matter clumped together in the early universe. Some of the best evidence for the existence of dark matter comes from galaxy cluster 1E , also known as the Bullet Cluster.

This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the big bang. Because the major components of the cluster pair — stars, gas and the apparent dark matter — behave differently during collision, scientists were able to study them separately.

Because the gases interact electromagnetically, the gases of both clusters slowed down much more than the stars. The third element in this collision, the dark matter, was detected indirectly by the gravitational lensing of background objects.

The dark matter by definition does not interact electromagnetically i. So during the collision, the dark matter clumps from the two clusters slide quietly past one another, just like the stars, leaving the hot gas most of the normal matter behind.

The gravitational lensing stayed with the dark matter and not the gas. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, such an effect would not be seen. Instead, the observations appear to be the first direct proof of dark matter. Compared to stars, galaxies are relatively close to one another. They interact and even collide. However, gravitational interactions between colliding galaxies could create new waves of star formation, supernovas and even black holes.

Four billion years from now, our own Milky Way galaxy is destined for a collision with the neighboring spiral Andromeda galaxy. The Sun will likely be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

Andromeda, also known as M31, is now 2. Computer simulations derived from Hubble data show that it will take an additional two billion years or more after the encounter for the interacting galaxies to completely merge under the tug of gravity.

They will reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly seen in the local universe. Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today. There is a small chance that M33 will hit the Milky Way first. The appearance and make-up of galaxies are shaped over billions of years by interactions with groups of stars and other galaxies.

However, the distances between the sun and these landmarks are usually measured indirectly. In the new study, researchers sought to directly measure distances between the sun and a large sample of stars to help construct a 3D map of the galaxy.

They focused on a specific kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. Cepheids are young supergiant stars that burn up to hundreds of thousands of times brighter than the sun. Like lighthouses on foggy shores, Cepheids brighten and dim in predictable cycles and are visible through the vast clouds of interstellar dust that often obscure dimmer stars. Cepheids appear to pulsate because their gas heats and cools, and expands and contracts, in very regular patterns that can last from hours to months.

The well-defined link between a Cepheid's brightness and its pulsation schedule means that by timing its pulsations, astronomers can deduce how bright a Cepheid is intrinsically. After comparing a Cepheid's intrinsic brightness to its apparent brightness — that is, how bright it appears from Earth — astronomers can then estimate the Cepheid's distance from our planet, given the knowledge that stars appear dimmer the farther away they are from us.

Using the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, which monitors the brightness of nearly 2 billion stars, the scientists charted the distance between the sun and more than 2, Cepheids throughout the Milky Way. These findings helped the astronomers build a large-scale 3D map of the Milky Way. This is the first such map based on directly measured distances to thousands of celestial landmarks across the galaxy. The new map helped reveal more details on distortions that astronomers had previously detected in the shape of the Milky Way.

Specifically, the galaxy's disk is not flat at distances greater than 25, light-years from the galactic core, but warped.