and clusters of clusters of galaxies, called superclusters, make up the. these structures and take a look at our address on these scales.

Between the stars, there can be vast interstellar clouds of gas and dust.. Spiral galaxies have a thin, pancake-shaped disk, with a spherical bulge

Elliptical galaxies are shaped roughly like watermelons,. 100 thousand light-years across (a light-year is the distance light travels

The image of the Local Group is a composite of real images of the actual galaxies that are in the Local Group. The galaxies have been placed in approximately correct orientation, if not scale

One of the most prominent members of the Local group is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Also prominent in the local group is the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), Leo I, and NGC 6822

M31 and the Milky Way are the most massive members of the Local Group, with M33 being the 3rd largest. Both M31 and the Milky Way have dwarf galaxies associated with them.

The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way. It has a total diameter of roughly 3 megaparsecs (10 million light-years; 9×1019 kilometres),[1] and a total mass of the order of 2×1012 solar masses (4×1042 kg).[2] It consists of two collections of galaxies in a “dumbbell” shape; the Milky Way and its satellites form one lobe, and the Andromeda Galaxy and its satellites constitute the other

The exact number of galaxies in the Local Group is unknown as some are occluded by the Milky Way; however, at least 80 members are known, most of which are dwarf galaxies.. The two largest members, the Andromeda and the Milky Way galaxies, are both spiral galaxies with masses of about 1012 solar masses each

the Cassiopeia Dwarf Galaxy), And VIII, And IX, And X, And XI, And XIX, And XXI and And XXII, plus several additional ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies.[4]. – The Milky Way’s satellite galaxies system comprises the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (disputed, considered by some not a galaxy), Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy, Draco Dwarf Galaxy, Carina Dwarf Galaxy, Sextans Dwarf Galaxy, Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy, Fornax Dwarf Galaxy, Leo I (a dwarf galaxy), Leo II (a dwarf galaxy), Ursa Major I Dwarf Galaxy and Ursa Major II Dwarf Galaxy, plus several additional ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies.[5]

Two massive bright spirals, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31, NGC 224), dominate a gravitationally-bound group of around 40 galaxies known as the Local Group which spans a volume approximately 10 million light years in diameter. Also prominent is the Triangulum galaxy (M33, NGC 598), a smaller spiral which (under very dark, clear conditions) is the most distant naked-eye object visible.

However, the group is very dynamic and membership of the Group is probably changing over time as galaxies interact with, and move between, other nearby groups such as the Maffei 1 Group, the Sculptor Group, and the M81 and M83 Groups. Although the position and radial velocity of local galaxies can be measured accurately, their distances can be difficult to determine, and the total membership of the Local Group remains uncertain.

Sag DEG is apparently being disrupted by tidal gravitational forces in its close encounter with the Milky Way. Local Group galaxies and subgroups are interacting gravitationally with each other (and with neighbouring groups) and mergers and collisions are thought to have happened in the past and speculated for the future

Example of a Low Surface Brightness Galaxy in the Virgo cluster. These galaxies are very hard to detect and the LSB mode on MegaCam enabled the possibility of such detections.

Taking advantage of MegaCam’s wide angle coverage, the NGVS team was able to observe the Virgo cluster in its entirety, covering an area of the sky equivalent to over 400 full moons, at a depth and resolution that significantly exceed those of any existing surveys of the cluster. The resulting mosaic, comprising nearly 40 billion pixels, is the deepest, widest contiguous field ever seen is such detail.

Virgo is the nearest large cluster of galaxies, roughly 50 Million light-years away from us. Whereas the Milky Way forms part of a relatively small group of galaxies, the “Local Group”, spread over the nearest few million light-years, Virgo contains dozens of bright galaxies and thousands of fainter ones

Our universe contains at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, maybe trillions, in all shapes and sizes. Most are very far away from our home galaxy, the Milky Way

It consists of our neighboring galaxies within the vast universe. The Local Group galaxies are all located within roughly 5 million light-years of space around us

Our Milky Way is just one of three large galaxies in the Local Group. But it’s not the biggest of the Local Group galaxies

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.. Virgo cluster, the closest large cluster of galaxies

More than 2,000 galaxies reside in the Virgo cluster, scattered in various subclusters whose largest concentration (near the famous system M87 [Virgo A]) is about 5 × 106 light-years in diameter. Of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster, 58 percent are spirals, 27 percent are ellipticals, and the rest are irregulars

Calibration of the absolute brightnesses of these giant ellipticals allows a leap to the measurement of distant regular clusters.

For most of human history, it was inconceivable that anything existed beyond the Milky Way. After all, the Milky Way is our home galaxy, and its billions of stars provided enough of a nighttime show to fascinate stargazers for millennia

But a peek over the celestial fence beyond the Milky Way’s tenuous halo yields a rich view of the nearby universe and galaxy evolution in progress.. The approximately 85 gravitationally bound galaxies near the Milky Way are collectively known as the Local Group

By studying the Local Group, astronomers can observe galaxies in their entirety, no longer confined to understanding a galaxy from the inside out.. Astronomers on Earth have front-row seats to the show of galaxy formation in the Local Group

A new wide-field image released today by ESO displays many thousands of distant galaxies, and more particularly a large group belonging to the massive galaxy cluster known as Abell 315. As crowded as it may appear, this assembly of galaxies is only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”, as Abell 315 — like most galaxy clusters — is dominated by dark matter

When looking at the sky with the unaided eye, we mostly only see stars within our Milky Way galaxy and some of its closest neighbours. More distant galaxies are just too faint to be perceived by the human eye, but if we could see them, they would literally cover the sky

These galaxies span a vast range of distances from us. Some are relatively close, as it is possible to distinguish their spiral arms or elliptical halos, especially in the upper part of the image

A composite image of the Messier 81 (M81) galaxy shows what astronomers call a “grand design” spiral galaxy, where each of its arms curls all the way down into its center. Located about 12 million light-years away in the Ursa Major constellation, M81 is among the brightest of the galaxies visible by telescope from Earth.

Galaxies are sprawling systems of dust, gas, dark matter, and anywhere from a million to a trillion stars that are held together by gravity. Nearly all large galaxies are thought to also contain supermassive black holes at their centers

The deeper we look into the cosmos, the more galaxies we see. One 2016 study estimated that the observable universe contains two trillion—or two million million—galaxies

Clusters of galaxies display a wide variety of morphological forms, ranging from rich aggregates of thousands of members to the relatively poor groups, like the Local Group which contains only 17 to 20 known members, or even to double or triple systems if these can be classed as clusters. The smaller groups appear to be by far the most numerous, but at present there exist no reliable data on the actual relative numbers of rich clusters and poor groups

For the purposes of the Catalogue of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies, Zwicky (Zwicky, Herzog, Wild, Karpowicz, and Kowal 1961-1968) classifies clusters as compact, medium compact, and open. He defines a compact cluster as one with a single pronounced concentration of galaxies, in which 10 or more galaxies appear (in projection) to be in contact; a medium compact cluster is one with a single concentration within which galaxies appear to be separated by several of their diameters, or in which there are several pronounced concentrations of galaxies; an open cluster is one without any pronounced peak of population, but which appears as a loose cloud of galaxies superposed on the general field.

He found that the clusters investigated could be divided into two categories, according to the types of galaxies encountered among their brightest members: (i) those containing appreciable numbers of galaxies of minor central concentration of light (late spiral and irregular galaxies); and (ii) those containing few or none of the latter.. The classifications assigned to clusters by the Morgan and Zwicky systems are not independent, but are strongly correlated

The Milky Way Galaxy – A spiral galaxy, type SBbc, centered in Sagittarius. The Milky Way is the galaxy which homes our Solar System together with at least 200 billion other stars and their planets, and thousands of clusters and nebulae including at least almost all objects of Messier’s catalog which are not galaxies on their own (the only possible exception may be M54 which may belong to SagDEG, a small galaxy which is currently in a close encounter with the Milky Way, and thus our closest known intergalactic neighbor)

As a galaxy, the Milky Way is actually a giant, as its mass is probably between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses, and its diameter is about 100,000 light years. Radio astronomial investigations of the distribution of hydrogene clouds have revealed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy of Hubble type Sb or Sc

Credit: COBE/DIRBE – NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Besides being attractive and often colorful, they are often suited to view the Milky Way objects (including nebulae and star clusters) in their celestial surroundings of field stars.

A galaxy is a huge collection of stars, nebulae, gas, planets, comets and almost anything that can be found in the universe, held together by the gravitational attraction between each of them. The smallest galaxies contain as little 100,000 stars while the bigger ones can contain more than 3000 billion

Most galaxies clump together in groups, held together by gravity, in a ‘local group’. Some of these groups, like the Virgo cluster and the Coma cluster, are massive and contain thousands of galaxies over an area in the region of 20 million light-years across

Multiple groups also form larger groups called super-clusters. You can see a lot of galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope with an exposure of a few days on a very small area of sky.