What lies Beyond the solar system
Where are we?
We are located on the Local Spur, or Orion Arm of the Milky Way, around 30,000 light years away from the centre of the galaxy.
The Milky Way has around 200 billion stars in it.
We are surrounded by a number of satellite galaxies, the most noticeable of which are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies around 200,000 light years away. They can be seen by the naked eye and shine at around 0th magnitude.
The Milky Way appears to be in the middle of eating the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. This is the closest of the dwarf galaxies at a distance of under 80,000 light years.
Galaxies tend to collect into clusters. The largest member of our Local Cluster is the Andromeda Galaxy. It is around 2 million light years away and is the most distant object that can be seen by the naked eye.
We call out local group The Andromeda Cluster and it consists of 50 galaxies of which we are the second largest. The mass of the local group is thought to be around three times the mass of the Milky Way and is around 10 million light years across.
The Andromeda Cluster is a member of the Virgo Supercluster. This is a relatively small supercluster at 100 million light years across and has the mass of around 2000 milky ways.
Even more massive than the Virgo Supercluster is The Great Attractor, a body with a mass of 10’s of thousands of Milky Ways. It is something of a mystery as it is located on the other side of the Milky Way from us, so observation suffers from great interference. However, all matter within a distance of around 500 million light years seems to be drawn into it.