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Shapley Supercluster
The Shapley Supercluster or Shapley Concentration (SCl 124) is the largest concentration of galaxies in our universe that forms a gravitationally interacting unit, thereby pulling itself together instead of expanding with the universe. It appears as a striking overdensity in the distribution of galaxies in the constellation of Centaurus. It is 650 million light-years away (redshift, z=0.046). History In 1930, Harlow Shapley and his colleagues at the Harvard College Observatory started a survey of galaxies in the southern sky, using photographic plates obtained at the 24-inch Boyden Observatory#Former telescopes, Bruce telescope at Bloemfontein, South Africa. By 1932, Shapley reported the discovery of 76,000 galaxies brighter than 18th apparent magnitude in a third of the southern sky, based on galaxy counts from his plates. Some of this data was later published as part of the Harvard galaxy counts, intended to map galactic obscuration and to find the space density of galaxies. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epoch (astronomy)
In astronomy, an epoch or reference epoch is a instant, moment in time used as a reference point for some time-varying astronomical quantity. It is useful for the celestial coordinates or orbital elements of a Astronomical object, celestial body, as they are subject to Perturbation (astronomy), perturbations and vary with time. These time-varying astronomical quantities might include, for example, the mean longitude or mean anomaly of a body, the node of its orbit relative to a reference plane, the direction of the apogee or Perihelion and aphelion, aphelion of its orbit, or the size of the major axis of its orbit. The main use of astronomical quantities specified in this way is to calculate other relevant parameters of motion, in order to predict future positions and velocities. The applied tools of the disciplines of celestial mechanics or its subfield orbital mechanics (for predicting orbital paths and positions for bodies in motion under the gravitational effects of other bodi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgo Cluster
The Virgo Cluster is a cluster of galaxies whose center is 53.8 ± 0.3 Mly (16.5 ± 0.1 Mpc) away in the Virgo constellation. Comprising approximately 1,300 (and possibly up to 2,000) member galaxies, the cluster forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which the Local Group (containing the Milky Way galaxy) is a member. The Local Group actually experiences the mass of the Virgo Supercluster as the Virgocentric flow. It is estimated that the Virgo Cluster's mass is 1.2 out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc. Many of the brighter galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and subsequently included in Charles Messier's catalogue of non-cometary fuzzy objects. Described by Messier as nebulae without stars, their true nature was not recognized until the 1920s. The cluster extends across approximately 8 degrees centered in the constellation Virgo. Some of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shapley Attractor
The Shapley attractor is a massive cluster of galaxies located in Shapley Supercluster, most well known for its high density and gravitational pull. Like the Great Attractor, it is obscured by the Milky Way's galactic plane The galactic plane is the plane (geometry), plane on which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles. In actual usage, the terms ''galactic plane'' and ''galac ..., lying behind the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA), so that in visible light wavelengths, it is difficult to observe directly. It is opposed to the Dipole Repeller, in the CMB dipole of local galactic flow. It is thought to be the composite contributions of the Shapley Concentration and the Great Attractor. References Shapley Supercluster {{physical-cosmology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milky Way
The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galaxy, which are so far away that they cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a Galaxy#Isophotal diameter, D25 isophotal diameter estimated at , but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge). Recent simulations suggest that a dark matter area, also containing some visible stars, may extend up to a diameter of almost 2 million light-years (613 kpc). The Milky Way has several List of Milky Way's satellite galaxies, satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, forming part of the Virgo Supercluster which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster. It is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars and at least that number of pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Attractor
The Great Attractor is a region of gravitational attraction in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies that includes the Milky Way galaxy, as well as about 100,000 other galaxies. The observed attraction suggests a localized concentration of mass having the order of 1016 solar masses. However, it is obscured by the Milky Way's galactic plane, lying behind the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA), so that in visible light wavelengths, the Great Attractor is difficult to observe directly. The attraction is observable by its effect on the motion of galaxies and their associated clusters over a region of hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe. These galaxies are observable above and below the Zone of Avoidance; all are redshifted in accordance with the Hubble flow, indicating that they are receding relative to the Milky Way and to each other, but the variations in their redshifts are large enough and regula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peculiar Motion
Peculiar motion or peculiar velocity refers to the velocity of an object relative to a ''rest frame''—usually a frame in which the average velocity of some objects is zero. Galactic astronomy In galactic astronomy, peculiar motion refers to the motion of an object (usually a star) relative to a Galactic rest frame. Local objects are commonly examined as to their vectors of position angle and radial velocity. These can be combined through vector addition to state the object's motion relative to the Sun. Velocities for local objects are sometimes reported with respect to the local standard of rest (LSR)—the average local motion of material in the galaxy—instead of the Sun's rest frame. Translating between the LSR and heliocentric rest frames requires the calculation of the Sun's peculiar velocity in the LSR. Cosmology In physical cosmology, peculiar velocity refers to the components of a galaxy's velocity that deviate from the Hubble flow. According to Hubble's law, g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosmic Microwave Background
The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost isotropic, uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other astronomical object, object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The accidental Discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, discovery of the CMB in 1965 by American radio astronomers Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s. The CMB is landmark evidence of the Big Bang scientific theory, theory for the origin of the universe. In the Big Bang cosmological models, during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an Opacity (optics), opaque fog of dense, hot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Group
The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way, where Earth is located. It has a total diameter of roughly , and a total mass of the order of . 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 two collections are separated by about and are moving toward one another with a velocity of . The group itself is a part of the larger Virgo Supercluster, which may be a part of the Laniakea Supercluster. 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 solar masses each. Each has its own system of satellite galaxies: * The Andromeda Galaxy's satellite system consists of Messier 32 (M32), Messier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shapley
Shapley is a surname that might refer to one of the following: * Lieutenant General Alan Shapley (1903–1973), of the U.S. Marine Corps, was a survivor the sinking of the USS Arizona in the attack on Pearl Harbor * Harlow Shapley (1885–1972), American astronomer, married to Martha * Martha Betz Shapley (1890–1981), American astronomer, married to Harlow * Mildred Shapley Matthews (1915–2016), American astronomy writer, daughter of Harlow and Martha * Willis Shapley (1917–2005), American administrator for NASA, son of Harlow and Martha * Lloyd Shapley (1923–2016), Nobel-winning American mathematician and economist, son of Harlow and Martha * Alice E. Shapley, American astronomer Shapley may also refer to: * the Shapley Supercluster * Shapley (crater), a lunar impact crater on the southern edge of Mare Crisium Concepts in game theory related to Lloyd Shapley: * Shapley value and the Aumann–Shapley value * Shapley–Shubik power index The Shapley–Shubik power ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clusters Of Galaxies
The observable universe is a spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth; the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth. The word ''observable'' in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. No signal can travel faster than light, hence there is a maximum distance, called the particle horizon, beyond which nothing can be det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abell Catalogue
The Abell catalog of rich clusters of galaxies is an all-sky catalog of 4,073 rich galaxy clusters of nominal redshift ''z'' ≤ 0.2. This catalog supplements a revision of George O. Abell's original "Northern Survey" of 1958, which had only 2,712 clusters, with a further 1,361 clustersthe "Southern Survey" of 1989, published after Abell's death by co-authors Harold G. Corwin and Ronald P. Olowin from those parts of the south celestial hemisphere that had been omitted from the earlier survey. The Abell catalog, and especially its clusters, are of interest to amateur astronomers as challenge objects to be viewed in dark locations on large aperture amateur telescopes. The Northern Survey The original catalog of 2,712 rich clusters of galaxies was published in 1958 by George O. Abell (1927–1983), who was then studying at the California Institute of Technology. The catalog, which formed part of Abell's PhD thesis, was prepared by means of a visual inspection of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, world's third-oldest university in continuous operation. The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient university, ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In 1231, 22 years after its founding, the university was recognised with a royal charter, granted by Henry III of England, King Henry III. The University of Cambridge includes colleges of the University of Cambridge, 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and List of institutions of the University of Cambridge#Schools, Faculties, and Departments, over 150 academic departm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
