The Local Group and the large-scale structure of the universe

The Milky Way belongs to the Local Group, a gravitationally bound family of more than 80 known galaxies spread across about 10 million light-years. Most are small dwarf galaxies, and the group is dominated by its two largest members, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2.5 million light-years away. The Local Group is one small part of much larger structures: it lies on the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself part of an even larger supercluster called Laniakea. On the largest scales, galaxies and galaxy clusters are arranged in a vast cosmic web of long filaments and sheets surrounding enormous, nearly empty regions called voids, some of them hundreds of millions of light-years across.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report