Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard

Science - Large Scale Structure of the Universe

 
First, Humankind became aware that the visible stars tended to move across the sky more or less in unison, and thus formed some sort of group.  Once it was confirmed that the Milky Way galaxy was but one of billions of galaxies, patterns started to become apparent in the distribution of the galaxies.  These became known as Clusters.  Then these clusters appeared to group themselves across the cosmos, so we had Superclusters.  Finally, with improved techniques in telescopes of different wavelengths, the entire cosmos was seen to have a filamentary structure with Superclusters strung together across the Universe.  Astronomers looking at this structure identified a number of huge areas in which galaxies were absent.  These have become known as Voids and, surprise surprise, Supervoids for the REALLY large ones!  We also look at the observations that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating rather than slowing down.  Finally, a brief look at some of the projects that have contributed recently to extending our knowledge of the structure of the Universe on these immense scales. 
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Introduction

 
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To put our place in the Universe in context, this diagram shows our place firstly within the Solar System, then the Sun's local vicinity, the closest galaxies, the Local Group, and finally in the Local Supercluster.