page_title: Great Attractor
hierarchical_section_title: Great Attractor
caption_attribution_description: English: Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The image is derived from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC)—more than 1.5 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog (PSC)--nearly 0.5 billion Milky Way stars. The galaxies are color coded by redshift (numbers in parentheses) obtained from the UGC, CfA, Tully NBGC, LCRS, 2dF, 6dFGS, and SDSS surveys (and from various observations compiled by the NASA Extragalactic Database), or photo-metrically deduced from the K band (2.2 μm). Blue/purple are the nearest sources (z &lt; 0.01); green are at moderate distances (0.01 &lt; z &lt; 0.04) and red are the most distant sources that 2MASS resolves (0.04 &lt; z &lt; 0.1). The map is projected with an equal area Aitoff in the Galactic system (Milky Way at center).
context_page_description: The Great Attractor is a gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster. The observed anomalies suggest a localized concentration of mass thousands of times more massive than the Milky Way. However, it is inconveniently obscured by our own Milky Way's galactic plane, lying behind the Zone of Avoidance, so in visible wavelengths the Great Attractor is difficult to observe directly.
  The anomaly is observable by its effect on the motion of galaxies and their associated clusters over a region hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe. These galaxies are observable above and below the ZOA; all are redshifted in accordance with the Hubble Flow, indicating that they are receding relative to us and to each other, but the variations in their redshifts are large enough and regular enough to reveal that they are slightly drawn towards the anomaly. The variations in their redshifts are known as peculiar velocities, and cover a range from about +700 km/s to −700 km/s, depending on the angular deviation from the direction to the Great Attractor.
context_section_description: The Great Attractor is a gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster. The observed anomalies suggest a localized concentration of mass thousands of times more massive than the Milky Way. However, it is inconveniently obscured by our own Milky Way's galactic plane, lying behind the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA), so in visible wavelengths the Great Attractor is difficult to observe directly.
  The anomaly is observable by its effect on the motion of galaxies and their associated clusters over a region hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe. These galaxies are observable above and below the ZOA; all are redshifted in accordance with the Hubble Flow, indicating that they are receding relative to us and to each other, but the variations in their redshifts are large enough and regular enough to reveal that they are slightly drawn towards the anomaly. The variations in their redshifts are known as peculiar velocities, and cover a range from about +700 km/s to −700 km/s, depending on the angular deviation from the direction to the Great Attractor.
  The Great Attractor itself is moving towards the Shapley Supercluster. Recent astronomical studies by a team of South African astrophysicists revealed a supercluster of galaxies, termed the Vela Supercluster, in the Great Attractor's theorized location.
caption: Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky. The location of the Great Attractor is shown following the long blue arrow at bottom-right.
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