Local Superclusters

In this segment of our “How far away is it” video book, we cover the superclusters closest to our supercluster, Virgo. First we discuss the overall structure of the nearest 20 superclusters and illustrate the galactic structures of galaxy filaments, walls and voids including: the Sculuptor void; the Perseus-Pegasus filament; the Fornax, Centaurus, and Sculptor walls as well as the Great Wall or Coma wall. Then we take a look at several of these superclusters and some of the galaxies in each one we examine. We start with the Hydra Supercluster with the Hydra Galaxy Cluster at its center. We examine NGC 2314, a rare double aligned pair of galaxies. We then move to the Centaurus Supercluster with the Centaurus Galaxy Cluster at its center. We then take a look at some of the galaxies in this supercluster including NGC 4603, NGC 4622, the unusual NGC 4650A, and NGC 4696. We then move on to the Perseus-Pisces Supercluster and the Perseus galaxy cluster within it and the remarkable galaxy NGC 1275 within it. Then we cover the Coma Supercluster with the Coma galaxy cluster at its center. We then take a look at the beautiful and wispy galaxy NGC 4921 along with NGC 4911. Next we review the distances to some of the other local superclusters including Hercules, Leo, Shapely, Horologium, and the 1 billion light years distant Corona-Borealis Supercluster. We also cover the unusual peculiar motion superimposed on the normal Hubble flow that all the galaxies within a billion light years have. It appears that they are all moving towards a Great Attractor in the Norma or Shapley Supercluster. Next we take a look at additional galaxies within a billion light years of us including: ESO 510 – G13; NGC 6782; ESO 243-49 HLX-1 with a supermassive back hole in its disk; Stephan’s Quintet; interacting galaxies NGC 1409 and NGC 1410; interacting galaxies ARP 127 and NGC 5679; galaxy cluster Abell S0740; ESO 325-G004 with its unique gravitational lens arcs called Einstein’s rings; and finish with the very interesting Hoag’s Object. We end with a map of all the superclusters where we highlight the ones we’ve seen and show the dot that represents our local volume.