Justice
The Milky Way's 'City' Just Got a New Name
Astronomers have named and mapped the supercluster of galaxies that contains our own.
Astronomers sometimes think of galaxies as being like massive neighborhoods, using gravity to bind stars, dust, and dark matter. As neighborhoods, they don't sprawl. Rather, they're found within groups of dozens of other galaxies, and those groups within massive "superclusters" that contain hundreds of galaxies, all interconnected by a network of thread-like baryonic matter.
Now, our own galactic megalopolis has a name: "Laniakea," meaning "immense heaven" in Hawaiian. An international team of astronomers, led by renowned scientist R. Brent Tully, has defined the supercluster of galaxies containing the Milky Way, publishing their work today in Nature.