Scientists Find New ‘Supercluster’ of Galaxies

University of Maine astronomers have discovered a “supercluster” of galaxies that is among the largest yet found.

The supercluster consists of a string of 22 clusters of galaxies spread over a distance between 1 billion and 2 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. It is marked by an unusually dense knot of six clusters.

“This supercluster is among the largest yet found, and the knot is as tight a structure as we ever see among clusters of galaxies,” said David Batuski, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the university.

A group of six clusters can be found in the Northern Hemisphere, and another one with eight clusters is in the southern half of the sky. The three are the densest known clumps of clusters, Batuski said. He and graduate students Kurt Slinglend and Chris Miller discovered the third supercluster.

Scientists study groups of galaxies to learn how the universe is shaped and what caused it to get that way. They are just beginning to map it.

Superclusters, inconceivably long strings of stars and galaxies that have been called mountains of the universe separated by valleys of voids, have been known to scientists for about 20 years.

The region studied by Batuski and the two Maine graduate students had been observed earlier by another group of scientists, who concluded that the clusters were spread too far apart to qualify as a supercluster.

The Maine team, using a new instrument that allows light from as many as 30 galaxies to be captured and recorded at one time, was able to take a larger number of measurements in each cluster. The team made its observations at the European Southern Observatory in Chile in 1994 and 1995.