The Local Group
Our galactic neighbourhood — the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum, the Magellanic Clouds, and the dozens of dwarf galaxies bound with them. The members and their relationships are drawn from the graph; their separations are given by the catalogue's descriptive scale labels, because numeric inter-galactic distances and positions are not part of the data.
The Local Group
- Laniakea Supercluster
The vast supercluster the Milky Way belongs to, defined in 2014 by the flows of galaxies toward a common gravitational focus. It contains around a hundred thousand galaxies across half a billion light-years.
- The Boötes Void
One of the largest known voids — an enormous, nearly-empty region of space containing very few galaxies, a vast bubble between the filaments and walls of the cosmic web.
- The Coma Cluster
A rich, dense cluster of over a thousand galaxies. In 1933 Fritz Zwicky found its galaxies moving far too fast to be held together by their visible mass — the first evidence for dark matter.
- The Local Group
The gravitationally-bound group of galaxies the Milky Way belongs to — dominated by the Milky Way and Andromeda, with the Triangulum galaxy and dozens of dwarfs. Andromeda and the Milky Way are approaching, and will merge in a few billion years.
- The Sloan Great Wall
One of the largest known structures in the universe — an immense wall of galaxies stretching over a billion light-years, mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, part of the filamentary cosmic web.
- The Virgo Cluster
The nearest large galaxy cluster, over a thousand galaxies bound together and centred on the giant elliptical M87. Its gravity draws the Local Group toward it, and it anchors our corner of the local supercluster.
- The Milky Way
The barred spiral galaxy that contains the Solar System, the Sun, and all stars visible to the naked eye.
- Andromeda Galaxy
The nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and the most distant object readily visible to the naked eye.
What this scene shows
Descriptive — no numeric geometry available
The catalogued galaxies and cosmic structures carry descriptive scale labels only — no numeric distance or coordinate — so no distance-true extragalactic scene is fabricated.
A true 3D map of the Local Group would require numeric distances and positions for each galaxy, which the catalogue does not carry. This scene stays descriptive rather than place galaxies at invented coordinates.
Highlights
- ›Descriptive by necessity — no numeric galaxy distances are fabricated
What it draws on
Knowledge connections
- Associated withLocal Group Explorer
- Associated withThe Local Group
- Associated withAndromeda Galaxy
- Associated withThe Milky Way
Sources
The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.
- NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.