Large-scale Structure
The Local Universe in 3D: A Pictorial Overview
Animation page showing the Powers of Two mpg
Colour pictures
This image shows superclusters, ie. regions in the nearby Universe with an excess of galaxies. The individual galaxies are not shown, instead we smooth -- or blur -- them and draw a surfce around the areas with a high density of galaxies. Higher density regions are shaded in red and lower density regions in blue. Our Galaxy (The Milky Way) would be at the centre of the picture, if it were shown. The viewpoint is from a distant position along the direction of the supergalactic pole. The names of the superclusters can be identified from the wire frame figures below.
Extra thanks to Geraint Lewis and his POV-RAY skills!
The following figures show the contour plots of the local Universe. The density field of galaxies has been smoothed with a 5/h Mpc Gaussian filter. The contours show the superclusters closer than 80/h Mpc and enclose regions where where the smoothed density of galaxies is at least 2.5 times the average density. The superclusters are labelled with the name of the most prominent cluster or group. Our Galaxy (The Milky Way) is at the centre of the plot (indicated by an 'X'). The directions are as follows: the Z-axis is towards the North Galactic Pole (b = 90), the X-axis is towards the Galactic Centre (l = 0) and the Y-axis is in the direction of the galactic rotation (l = 90).
For more details see Hudson 1993a .
The viewpoint is from l = 35 b= 25, nearly face-on to the Supergalactic Plane. The two dominant players in the local Universe are obvious: the Centaurus-Hydra supercluster is a filament oriented along the line of sight from Virgo at 13/h Mpc to A3581 at 67/h Mpc with its peak at Centaurus at a distance of 35/h Mpc and, on the other side of the sky from the Milky Way, the Perseus-Pisces supercluster at a distance of 55/h Mpc. The Persues-Pisces supercluster is losing to the Centaurus-Hydra supercluster in the "tug-of-war" on the Milky Way because although it is more massive, it is also further away.
The viewpoint is rotated by 90 degrees. It is now from l = 125 b= 25, nearly edge-on to the Supergalactic Plane. Note the concentration of superclusters in the plane.
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