The Virgo Galaxy Cluster is the nearest major galaxy cluster to earth and we can survey it with extremely high sensitivity and in great detail. Comprising approximately 1,300 (and possibly up to 2,000) member galaxies, the cluster forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which the Local Group - containing our galaxy, the Milky Way - is a member. Several deep sky surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) show us, that the space is filled with billions of galaxies forming filamentary Cosmic Structures.
In this animation 743 brighter galaxies of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster are shown, including the giant
elliptical galaxy Messier 87, which is located near the center of the cluster. M87 is about 53
million light-years away from Earth and one of the largest and most massive galaxies in the local
universe with an active supermassive black hole at its core.
Many galaxies of the Virgo Cluster were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s already. For
this vizualization images from the SDSS were taken. Annoying artifacts and foreground stars have
been removed as good as possible. For a better view the galaxy sizes have been exaggerated by
a factor of ten. The field of view is about 6 million light years.
Click the buttons on the right to start and stop the automatic rotation, to open and close info boxes, to change between the various surveys and to open this introduction. The animation can be accompanied by music using the audio player at the bottom of the page.
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