But, although gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity has an infinite range. It spans some 10 million light-years of space. The Local Group is a collection of galaxies. Our home Milky Way galaxy (MW, yellow) and our companion Andromeda galaxy (M31, red) are participating in a downward flow away from a vast underdense region called the Local Void. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds Orbits of galaxies in our local supercluster, called the Virgo Supercluster. Triangulum Galaxy: 2nd-closest large spiral galaxy Going fast! Want to get to know the neighbors? It’s somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.Īstronomers have also discovered that our Local Group is on the outskirts of a giant supercluster of galaxies, known as the Virgo Supercluster.ĮarthSky 2022 lunar calendars now available! They make great gifts. On the other hand, the Local Group does have a gravitational center. It doesn’t, of course, but the image is organized that way, honoring our human perspective. The illustration above suggests our Milky Way galaxy lies at the center of the Local Group. As a result, some Local Group galaxies are visible to the unaided eye from a dark site. They’re only millions of light-years away, instead of billions. On the vast astronomical distance scale, the Local Group galaxies are relatively close to us. So is the Local Group considered a large structure in our universe? Yes and no. There are also 50 or so dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. And the third galaxy, called the Triangulum galaxy, is the smallest of the three large ones. But it’s not the biggest of the Local Group galaxies. Our Milky Way is just one of three large galaxies in the Local Group. The Local Group’s diameter as a whole is about 10 million light-years. The Local Group galaxies are all located within roughly 5 million light-years of space around us. It consists of our neighboring galaxies within the vast universe. But our Local Group of galaxies is different. At billions of light-years away, most are too far to see without binoculars or a telescope. Most are very far away from our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Our universe contains at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, maybe trillions, in all shapes and sizes. Image via Richard Powell/ Atlas of the Universe. What is the Local Group? It’s a gravitationally bound system of the galaxies nearest to our Milky Way.
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