Large-Scale Structure in the CfA galaxy catalog


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Sky distribution of approximately 30000 galaxies from CfA Catalog. Plot is made in galactic coordinates.
GIF (38k)


Sky distribution of approximately 30000 galaxies from CfA Catalog with yellow circles denoting positions of several known superclusters (the number in brackets is the number of galaxy clusters in this superclusters which gives idea of its richness). Some of the superclusters don't seem to be located in overdense regions. That's because most of them are farther in space then galaxies on this plot. Note though that famous Shapley Concentration and Great Attractor which lies in the same direction are located in markedly overdense area. Plot is made in galactic coordinates. GIF (39k)


3D distribution of approximately 30000 galaxies from CfA Catalog. The Milky Way is in the center of the plot. Its plane is horizontal which can be seen as so-called zone of avoidance - dark empty horizontal cones. The verical scale of the plot is 160 Mpc (qo=0.5, Ho=100). Note the numerous "fingers of God" - the chains of galaxies which pointing to the Milky Way (the well know artefact which is explained by velocity dispersion in galaxy clusters. See next plot). Note also the long curved chain of galaxies in the upper part of the plot - the famous Great Wall.
GIF (27k)


Filtered 3D distribution of galaxies from CfA Catalog. On this plot only galaxies from overdense regions are shown. The red circles are galaxy clusters which were taken from ACO Catalog (note that many of them coincide with "fingers of God"). The Milky Way is in the center of the plot but the distribution is viewed from the point different from the previous one (it is shown by location of blue box which limits the distribution). The Great Wall (semicircle in the upper part of the plot) can now be seen much better and the filtered distribution reveals filamentary structure of galaxy distribution
GIF (22k)


See also:

Copenhagen University Observatory Large Scale Structure page with lots of visualisations of galaxy distribution in CfA catalog.

Distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the Local Supercluster region. (By Brent Tully and Michelle Mercer).

3D slice of combined South and North cones including 9325 galaxies. Look here for caption and credits. The picture is exposed at Science pavilion of NCSA virtual Exposition

APM Galaxy Survey Page: describes the largest sky galaxy survey to date covering about 1/10 of the sky and consistiing of over 2 million galaxies (contains pictures of the distribution of galaxies on the sky)

Large-scale distribution of galaxies in the LEDA database.

3D picture of nearby Universe: This page contains a couple of 3D contour plots from Mike Hudson's paper in MNRAS which depicture locations of several close (r < 80/h Mpc) galaxy clusters and superclusters

Las Campanas Redshift Survey


I'm grateful to A.A. Vedenov who inspired (though not directly) this work.


Andrey Kravtsov (University of Chicago)