Vela Supercluster Scale Far Exceeds Expectations

The University of Cape Town in South Africa recently announced that its researchers participated in an international study that used new technological methods to analyze the size of the Carina Supercluster. The results show that it is larger than previously thought by the astronomy community, and the findings help researchers explore the mechanisms influencing galaxy motions more deeply.
Superclusters are large-scale structures in the universe that are much larger than galaxy clusters. According to the University of Cape Town, for a long time, about 20% of the sky has been difficult to observe due to being obscured by dust and stars in the Milky Way’s disk, a region known as the “Zone of Avoidance.” The Carina Supercluster is located within this observational blind spot, making its true size difficult to determine.
Researchers from the University of Cape Town, the University of Lyon in France, and other institutions used new data analysis methods to overcome observational limitations. The results show that the Carina Supercluster is about 800 million light-years from Earth, spans approximately 300 million light-years, and has a total mass equivalent to about 300 billion times that of the Sun. Its size is comparable to the well-known Shapley Supercluster. The researchers also found that the Carina Supercluster has a complex structure, consisting of two dense cores that are approaching each other.
The team combined galaxy redshift data with information on galaxy distances and motions to map the distribution of cosmic structures hidden behind the Milky Way. Additionally, they used observational data from the Southern African Large Telescope and the South African MeerKAT radio telescope.
The researchers believe that this observational achievement fills an important gap in the cosmic structure map and will help further understand the large-scale motions of galaxies under gravitational influence. (Xinhua News Agency)