Scientists have announced that the Milky Way galaxy resides on the outskirts of a large, previously unknown galaxy super-cluster, which they have named Laniakea, derived from the Hawaiian words for "immeasurable heave."
The discovery was reported this week in the latest issue of the journal Nature.
Researchers made the discovery thanks to a new mapping technique that combines the distances between more than 8,000 galaxies and their relative motions, according to Reuters.
In the study, the researchers confirmed that super-cluster spans some 520 million light-years in diameter. One light-year is the distance that light, which moves at about 186,000 miles per second, travels in one year, or approximately 5.88 trillion miles.
Before the discovery, scientists were under the impression that the Milky Way galaxy, which is where Earth and the rest of the solar system resides, was part of a cluster measuring just 100 million light-years in diameter.
The study confirms that that structure is only a portion of the larger Laniakea.
The Hercules, Coma, Shapley, and Perseus-Pieces super-clusters border Laniakea, though the scientists haven't determined the far edges of the neighboring galaxy complexes yet.
The researchers will need to make thousands more distance measurements before determining the far edges of neighboring galaxy complexes, said astronomer and lead researcher Brent Tully, with the University of Hawaii.
"We haven't seen the edges of our neighbors and we haven't seen far enough to understand what's causing this full motion of our galaxy," Tully said, according to Reuters.
Having a clear method for identifying super-clusters should help scientists figure out how galaxies, like the Milky Way, evolve, astronomer Elmo Tempel, with the Tartu Observatory in Estonia, said in a Nature commentary.
"Hopefully, this will initiate observational programs to carry out additional direct-distance measurements of galaxies," Tempel said in an email to Reuters.
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