Map of the Universe

Laniakea Supercluster

Supercluster · Basin of attraction home to the Milky Way

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Laniakea Supercluster
Picture: Andrew Z. Colvin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

About the Laniakea Supercluster

The light we see from it set out 0.22 billion years ago, when the universe was 13.6 billion years old (redshift 0.0154).

The map lists it as a supercluster and shows it at the scale of the large-scale universe, drawn on the supergalactic plane.

Its distance or nature is debated, and the map shows one published value.

Our home supercluster, defined by where galaxies' motions flow (Tully et al. 2014): about 160 Mpc (520 million light-years) across and 10¹⁷ solar masses, with flows converging on the Great Attractor. Drawn as a circle centred on the Great Attractor; the real boundary is irregular. Later work suggests Laniakea may be part of the larger Shapley basin (Valade et al. 2024).

Key numbers

Distance (comoving, today)0.222 billion light-years (68 Mpc)
Redshift z0.0154
Light travel time0.22 billion years
Universe's age when this light left13.6 billion years
Distance methodredshift-independent (literature)
Supergalactic coordinatesSGL 188.1°, SGB +7.1°
On the mapThe dashed circle marks its approximate size around its centre. Structures this large have no sharp edge, and the circle is not drawn to an exact shape.
Sizeabout 522 million light-years across

Where it is

Its place in the universe, from the inside out: Laniakea Supercluster › Observable universe.

Zoom out to see it in context: Laniakea, a view about 850 million light-years across.

From Wikipedia

The Laniakea Supercluster or Laniakea for short is the large-scale structure centered around the Great Attractor that is home to the Milky Way and approximately 100,000 other nearby galaxies. It was originally defined in September 2014 as a galaxy supercluster, when a group of astronomers, including R.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Laniakea Supercluster, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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