The Sky Tonight

September 04, 2014

Say hello to Laniakea, our cosmic neighbourhood
Paris (AFP) Sept 03, 2014
Astronomers said Wednesday they have mapped the galaxy supercluster of which our Solar System forms a tiny part, and named the mighty mass Laniakea, or "immense heaven" in the language of Hawaii. Laniakea comprises some 100,000 galaxies with about a hundred million billion suns, they reported in the journal Nature. It would take 500 million years, travelling at the speed of light, to travel from one end of the supercluster to the other. Galaxies are not distributed randomly throughout the Un ... read more

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