A super cluster of galaxies
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 07:01
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org)—Most galaxies lie in clusters, groupings of several to many thousands of galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy itself is a member of the "Local Group," a band of about fifty galaxies whose other large member is the Andromeda Galaxy about 2.3 million light-years away. The closest large cluster of galaxies to us is the Virgo Cluster, with about 2000 members, whose center is about 50 million light-years away. The space between all these galaxies is not empty, but is filled with hot gas whose temperature is of order ten million kelvin, or even higher.