Local Supercluster - Definition and Overview

The Virgo Supercluster or Local Supercluster is the supercluster of galaxies that contains the Local Group and with it our galaxy, the Milky Way. It has the pancake-like shape of a flattened disk, with a diameter of about 200 million light years. It contains about 100 groups and clusters of galaxies and is dominated by the Virgo cluster near its center. The Local Group is located near the edge and is drawn towards the Virgo cluster.

By tracking its gravitational effect on the movement of galaxies, one can estimate that the total mass of the Virgo Supercluster is about 10¹⁵ solar masses. As its luminosity is far too small for this number of stars, it is thought that a large part of its mass is dark matter.

It is suspected that, as clusters gather in superclusters, so do superclusters gather in hyperclusters. Those hypercluster themselves would be the biggest structure after the Great Wall.

A gravitational anomaly known as the Great Attractor lies somewhere within the local supercluster.

See also

Large-scale structure of the cosmos, Extragalactic astronomy