Now, we all know that large groups of stars held by gravity form galaxies. But I was really surprised when I first came to know that galaxies themselves occur in groups or clusters held together either due to gravitational attraction, or some other additional attractive force other than gravity. Just imagine how great the magnitude of this attractive force would be if it can keep two galaxies which are a couple million light years away from each other, together. I was completely spellbound when I learnt more about this. I am sharing a few of those facts about galaxies in this post.
Galaxies can be found in Groups, Clusters or Superclusters. Galaxy Groups are those which generally contain less than 50 galaxies. The Milky Way is part of the Galaxy Group called the Local Group, which contains more than 40 galaxies. But most of them are found in Clusters. Each of these clusters may contain a few dozen to several thousand galaxies and their diameter may be 10 million light years or more. The surprising part is, the grouping of galaxies doesn’t end here. Some of these clusters further interact and get grouped to form Superclusters or even larger structures called Networks.
Mind-Boggling Fact: The Great Wall, a network of galaxies, is one of the largest structures ever mapped. It is more than 500 million light years long and 200 million light years wide.
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