What Is A Supercluster?
Superclusters are, in short, massive collections of Galaxies that exist within a given proximity to each other – namely in a ‘cluster’. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, for example both exist within an area known as the Local Group. The Local Group however, exists, along with a large selection of other galaxies, in an area known as the Local Supercluster.
Superclusters are believed to span up to 200,000,000 light-years across or more. They usually consist of around ten to a dozen galaxy clusters. Each of these galaxy clusters is a concentration of hundreds to thousands of galaxies. These Superclusters are believed to make up somewhere around 10% of the entire universe. They are big!
Here are some of the most well known Superclusters in the Universe:
The Virgo Supercluster
A great example of a supercluster is our Local Supercluster—also called the Virgo Supercluster. Our Milky Way Galaxy, along with more than 45,000 other galaxies, is part of this supercluster.