A group of Cape Town-based researchers have discovered a new concentration of galaxies in a constellation dubbed the Vela supercluster.
An international team of researchers, spearheaded by Renée Kraan-Korteweg of the University of Cape Town, have discovered an entirely new mass of galaxies dubbed the Vela supercluster.
Cited as the single largest astrological object yet discovered, the Vela supercluster is a constellation bearing thousands upon thousands of undiscovered stars.
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While it might sound off that such an expanse of space as – up to now – been undocumented, the research which led to the discovery is the result of the use of several telescopes which, together, peered through cosmic dust obscuring our vision beyond the Milky Way.
Using the newly refurbished South African Large Telescope (located near Cape Town) in addition to the Anglo-Australian Telescope near Sydney and several X-ray surveys of the galactic plane.
The study attempted to calculate how fast each galaxy above or below the galactic plane was moving away from Earth; the end result revealed that as all visible galaxies were moving together, there were networks at play that hadn’t been visible up until now.
Michelle Cluver, an astrophysicist at the University of the Western Cape, stated that after running calculations, “It became obvious we were uncovering a massive network of galaxies, extending much further than we had ever expected.”
The research team estimate that the Vela supercluster could contain somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 trillion stars and is roughly 800 million light-years distant.
The supercluster could reveal substantial information on the formation of the local group of galaxies; the researchers estimate that thanks to Vela’s gravitational tug, galaxies such as our own Milky Way have sped up movement by about 50 kilometers per second.
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Source: Business Insider
