Nearby voids in the Universe

This is a computer generated image of the distribution of matter in the nearby Universe, as determined by means of galaxy motions in this region.It was based on the observations of the velocities of more than 2000 galaxies from which the mean space density has been derived.The dark areas correspond to regions with little or no matter at all (empty 'voids') and the brighter areas to regions of enhanced density.One of these, which is clearly recognised by the present method, is the well-known 'Great Attractor' that was first found in the 1980's.The Milky Way galaxy is situated at the centre. On the scale of this image, the size of the Milky Way itself (diameter 100,000 lightyears) would be only about 0.015 mm. The radius of the plotted region is about 300 million light-years. Thus it would take 600 million years for a lightbeam to traverse the field of the image.The 'voids' have diameters of about 100 to 200 million lightyears.The image represents a cut along the 'supergalactic plane'. Many nearby galaxies are situated near this plane.

Bildnachweis:

ESO

Über das Bild

ID:eso9631a
Typ:Simulation
Veröffentlichungsdatum:25. Juli 1996
Dazugehörige Veröffentlichungen:eso9631
Größe:2608 x 2596 px

Über das Objekt

Typ:Unspecified : Cosmology : Morphology : Large-Scale Structure
Kategorie:Cosmology

Bildformate

Großes JPEG
917,4 KB

Skalierbar


Bildschirm-Hintergrundbilder

1024x768
153,9 KB
1280x1024
232,5 KB
1600x1200
322,2 KB
1920x1200
400,5 KB
2048x1536
503,1 KB