George edited subsectionAims__To_u.tex  about 8 years ago

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Galaxies are attracted toward one another due to the force of gravity,   so most galaxies in the Universe tend to be near other galaxies, existing  in clumps called groups or clusters, depending on their size. clusters.  Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, lives in  a rather insignificant cluster we call the Local Group. This cluster  has two big galaxies, our own and the Andromeda Galaxy (M 31), in 

have a look at some of the galaxies. There are well over a thousand on this  plate, though many are too faint to see without a microscope.  The Virgo cluster is a big the closest galaxy  clusterof galaxies which happens  to be  quite close to us, the Milky Way,  which is why it appears so large and spectacular. In fact, it has recently been discovered the Virgo cluster is actually one of the smaller clusters  that our whole have been observed, and both the  Local Group is probably falling into the Virgo Cluster, sucked in by  its gravity.  (By and  theway,  Virgo is by no means the biggest galaxy cluster known. In  fact, it is a bit Cluster form part  of a runt; it only looks spectacular because it is  very close to us. larger structure called the Virgo Supercluster.  If you look hard at the Virgo cluster plate, you will see lots of tiny galaxies in the background \ -- \ try it. These  are part of an absolutely another  colossal supercluster of galaxies, known as the `Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster', of Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster,  which Virgo is merely a tiny  outlying part. And evidence coming in at along with  the moment suggests that even  this supercluster is just Virgo Supercluster  and others forms  part of an even bigger sheet larger structure called the Laniakea Supercluster.  The scale  of structure doesn't end with  superclusters, even these unfathomably   large objects are observed to group together along filaments and sheets,  separated by relatively empty `voids'.  The network of filaments and voids form what is  known as the `Supergalactic plane', hundreds of Mpc  across. Even this Supergalactic plane seems to be just one of many `Cosmic Web', itself  a relatively recent and extremely important discovery  in Cosmology.  In Figure 3 we show an image of  the universe, forming a bubble-like network on cosmic web constructed from  the biggest scales we  can currently observe.) Sloan Digital Sky   Survey, which measured the positions and redshifts (a cosmological unit of distance) of  millions of galaxies.  The Virgo cluster is so close to us that it doesn't all fit even on  a Schmidt plate \ -- \ this picture only shows the centre. So in this