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.