LANIAKEA SUPERCLUSTER

This term has been appearing since September 2014. Many of you may not have heard what it is about, but Laniakea is the result of research into the structure of the universe. The translation of the Hawaiian word Laniake is “great firmament” or “open sky”. Using the Green Bank radio telescope, it was determined that our galaxy is part of an incredibly large supercluster that astronomers called Laniake. Superclusters are among the largest structures in the universe, and are composed of local clusters. These local clusters contain dozens or hundreds of galaxies, and connected by a network – form superclusters. The Laniakea supercluster is estimated to contain approximately 100,000 galaxies, and to be 500 million light-years across. Many of you are wondering – how did this huge space construction come to be mapped? Estimating the speed of the galaxies in the neighborhood, and the way these galaxies move in relation to the expansion of the universe (started 14 billion years ago) – scientists have calculated the location of each galaxy. The Milky Way is located on the edge of the Laniake supercluster. Laniake’s neighboring superclusters are: Hercules Supercluster, Perseus-Rices Supercluster, Shapley Supercluster and Coma Supercluster. And finally “icing on the cake”. They are all those parts that make up the unimaginably large Pisces-Cetus.