The Hercules Superclusters (SCl 160) refers to a set of two nearby
superclusters of
galaxies.
Relative to other local superclusters, Hercules is considered particularly large, being approximately 330 Mly in diameter. The
Northern Local Supervoid
The Northern Local Supervoid is a region of space devoid of rich clusters of galaxies, known as a void. It is the closest supervoid and is located between the Virgo (Local), Coma and Hercules superclusters. On the sky, it is located between Boà ...
lies in front of the superclusters, and is as big as the superclusters themselves. The redshifts of the member galaxies lie between 0.0304 and 0.0414.
The region includes
Abell 2147,
Abell 2151 (Hercules Cluster), and
Abell 2152 galaxy clusters
A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-l ...
.
An extremely long filament of galaxies has been found, that connects this group of clusters to the
Abell 2197 Abell may refer to:
People
*Abell (surname)
* George O. Abell, of the astronomical catalogues fame
Places
;United States
* Abell, Maryland, a location in St. Mary's County, Maryland
* Abell, a neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland
* Abells Corners, ...
and
Abell 2199 pair.
in the nearby constellation
Corona Borealis
Corona Borealis is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its brightest stars form a se ...
is also a member.
The Hercules Superclusters are near the
Coma Supercluster
The Coma Supercluster (SCl 117) is a nearby supercluster of galaxies comprising the Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) and the Leo Cluster (Abell 1367).
Located 300 million light-years from Earth, it is in the center of the Great Wall and a part of the Co ...
, helping make up part of the
CfA2 Great Wall.
In the 1930s,
Harlow Shapley
Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal.
Shapley used Cepheid variable stars to estim ...
studied the structure of the distribution of galaxies in the
constellation of Hercules, and was probably first to discover the existence of a supercluster in that region. However, this was not confirmed until the 1970s. In 1976, Massimo Tarenghi suggested that the A2151 cluster was part of a single supercluster, and at a conference in
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
in 1977, he, together with several other astronomers, presented evidence that it was indeed a supercluster that appeared in that region.
See also
*
Abell catalogue
The Abell catalog of rich clusters of galaxies is an all-sky catalog of 4,073 rich galaxy clusters of nominal redshift ''z'' ≤ 0.2. This catalog supplements a revision of George O. Abell's original "Northern Survey" of 1958, wh ...
*
Large-scale structure of the universe
The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time, because the electromagnetic radiation from these obj ...
*
List of Abell clusters
The Abell catalogue is a catalogue of approximately 4,000 galaxy clusters with at least 30 members, almost complete to a redshift of ''z'' = 0.2. It was originally compiled by the American astronomer George O. Abell in 1958 using plates from PO ...
References
Hercules (constellation)
Galaxy superclusters
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