Post by glactus on Jul 29, 2009 22:07:38 GMT
The great Sculptor superclusters give us an insight to the vastness of the cosmos in space and time and leave us with the never-ending thought - are we alone in the Universe. We may not be, but for now - all we can do is to look, gaze in awe and wonder - at the marvel of it all.
The superclusters in the Sculptor region of the sky are not obvious structures. This map is a plot of the brightest galaxies (from the Principal Galaxies Catalogue) in this region of the sky and although the locations of the main clusters are marked, the superclusters are hard to see.
The Sculptor superclusters are important however because they are contained within a major wall of galaxies which sweeps through this region of the sky across nearly a billion light years of space.
Maximum redshift = (z) .0537
maximum distance= 730 million light years
The Sculptor wall
The map above is a slice of the universe which shows the Sculptor Wall. This map is a plot of 7400 bright galaxies (from the HyperLeda database) in the vicinity of the Sculptor Wall. Our galaxy is at the bottom and the top of the map is 800 million light years away. The blue line shows the Sculptor Wall (At 500 millon light years) which is sometimes called the Southern Wall. The wall is faint beyond 500 million light years because the data is incomplete beyond that distance.
Notice that the nearest part of the wall (the Phoenix supercluster) lies next to a large rectangular void. This is called the Sculptor Void, and it is one of the largest voids in the nearby universe.
Credits:
References:
Abell G, Corwin H, Olowin R, (1989), A catalogue of Rich
Clusters of Galaxies, Astrophys J Supp, 70, 1.Struble M, Rood H,
(1999), A compilation of redshifts and velocity dispersions for
ACO clusters, Astrophys J, 125, 35.
The superclusters in the Sculptor region of the sky are not obvious structures. This map is a plot of the brightest galaxies (from the Principal Galaxies Catalogue) in this region of the sky and although the locations of the main clusters are marked, the superclusters are hard to see.
The Sculptor superclusters are important however because they are contained within a major wall of galaxies which sweeps through this region of the sky across nearly a billion light years of space.
Maximum redshift = (z) .0537
maximum distance= 730 million light years
The Sculptor wall
The map above is a slice of the universe which shows the Sculptor Wall. This map is a plot of 7400 bright galaxies (from the HyperLeda database) in the vicinity of the Sculptor Wall. Our galaxy is at the bottom and the top of the map is 800 million light years away. The blue line shows the Sculptor Wall (At 500 millon light years) which is sometimes called the Southern Wall. The wall is faint beyond 500 million light years because the data is incomplete beyond that distance.
Notice that the nearest part of the wall (the Phoenix supercluster) lies next to a large rectangular void. This is called the Sculptor Void, and it is one of the largest voids in the nearby universe.
Credits:
References:
Abell G, Corwin H, Olowin R, (1989), A catalogue of Rich
Clusters of Galaxies, Astrophys J Supp, 70, 1.Struble M, Rood H,
(1999), A compilation of redshifts and velocity dispersions for
ACO clusters, Astrophys J, 125, 35.