The Laniakea Supercluster

I belong to The James Webb Space Telescope group. I found this post very thought provoking:

“For the longest time, everyone believed the Earth was the center of it all. In the 1540's Copernicus proved the Earth revolves around the sun and then we weren't at the center of it all. Later, we were found to be in a galaxy and that WAS the center of it all. Then Hubble found another galaxy and we were, once again, not the center of it all. A few decades later, there's the discovery of the CMB, and readings show that, except for minor variations created in the first trillionth of a second, it's consistent in all directions and detectable by us in pretty much the SAME WAVELENGTH, even in an expanding universe, which, yup, puts us right back at the center of it all. And that's funny.” (Source: some guy named Joe)

Have you ever seen the Milky Way with your naked eye. I have a very faint memory of being taught about the Milky Way, but I don’t know if I have ever been in a place big enough and dark enough and at just the right time to see it. I really admire those photographers who will go to great lengths to capture just the right picture with just the right lens.

I found this picture on pixabay. It must have been a spectacular night, sitting in the mountains, next to the lake under a few scattered clouds and the backdrop nothing but black sky, twinkling stars, and the glory of the Milky Way.

It was in mid to late 2014 that an international team of astronomers defined the contours of the immense supercluster of galaxies that contains our own Milky Way. According to earthsky.com they named the supercluster Laniakea, meaning immense heaven in Hawaiian. The name honors Polynesian navigators who used knowledge of the heavens to voyage across the immensity of the Pacific Ocean.

“Galaxies are not distributed randomly throughout the universe. Instead, they are found in groups, like our own Local Group, that contain dozens of galaxies, and in massive clusters containing hundreds of galaxies, all interconnected in a web of filaments in which galaxies are strung like pearls. Where these filaments intersect, we find huge structures, called superclusters.

“The superclusters appear to be interconnected, but the boundaries between them are poorly defined and not well understood. These astronomers have helped define the boundaries of our local supercluster.

“The Milky Way resides in the outskirts of one such supercluster, whose extent has for the first time been carefully mapped using new techniques. This Laniakea Supercluster is 500 million light-years in diameter and contains the mass of contains the mass of one hundred million billion suns, spread across 100,000 galaxies.” (Source: earthsky.org)

The Milky Way galaxy is found in a small group of galaxies known as the Local Group. It towards the edge of a relatively small supercluster which we call the Local Supercluster (or sometimes the Virgo Supercluster after the Virgo Cluster, the largest cluster of galaxies in it).

The Galactic Center of the Milky Way is approximately 8 kiloparsecs away from Earth. Or in language I am more accustomed to 153,388,093,533,760,000 miles.

And the Milky Way appears brightest in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius.

Where do we sit in all of that space?

We reside on a small, rocky planet called Earth. Our planet is part of a discrete solar system in an arm of the spiral shaped Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is so vast and yet, it is only one of billions of other galaxies that exist within the universe.

Based on the deepest images obtained so far, it's one of about 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Can we even wrap our minds around that number??

Although several dozen minor galaxies lie closer to our Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy is the closest large spiral galaxy to ours. Excluding the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere, the Andromeda galaxy is the brightest external galaxy you can see. Thanks to sheffieldbears.com for the information.

A question was asked of science: “What is at the edge of the universe?” The answer was given: “As far as we can tell, there is no edge to the universe. Space spreads out infinitely in all directions. Furthermore, galaxies fill all of the space through-out the entire infinite universe.”

Our Creator did that!

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God…” Hebrews 11:3 ESV

When I stop and contemplate our universe and time and space…it almost hurts my head. There is no end to any of it.

I have mentioned it before, but when I was a little girl I remember a discussion with my mom on space and how large it is. I remember trying to wrap my little mind around the fact that space did not end. My mom in all her wisdom said something like, “Let’s put it this way. If you travel all the way to the end of the universe and you come to a wall telling you that is the end; what’s on the other side?”

That question, “What’s on the other side” made perfect and total sense to me and from that time to this, I still do not clearly understand the meaning of no end.

In the Universe, we belong to Laniakea Supercluster. In Laniakea Supercluster, we belong to Virgo Supercluster. In Virgo Supercluster, we belong to Local Group. In Local Group, we belong to Milky Way. In Milky Way, we belong to the Orion Arm. In Orion Arm, we belong to the Solar System. In the Solar System we are in Earth.

“He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.” Job 26:7 ESV

David wrote in Psalm 8:3, “I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained.”

When we see the infinite number of stars, coupled with the knowledge that man has discovered thousands upon thousands of galaxies, each containing millions of stars…I mean….wow!

We should be bowing in reverent awe to a Creator God so big and so powerful that He can make all that and call it the work of His fingers!

Psalm 147:4 tells us that “He counts the number of the stars, He calls them all by name.”

It is impossible for us know how many stars there are, not to mention the “name” of every star!

We cannot begin to imagine how big our God is. But we can know this. He loves us with an infinite love that we may never, for all of eternity, truly understand. He loves you. He wants you.

“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving…” Ephesians 2:8-10 The Message

by Jeanette Stark – Friday, April 28, 2023