Scientists of Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) have discovered a supercluster of galaxies. The galaxies are as big as 20 million billion suns, (now how big is that?). Their findings were published in the latest journal of the American Astro Society, “The Astrophysical Journal. They have named this supercluster as Saraswathi. This is the largest known structure near our universe. It is around 10 billion years old and is 4000 million light years away.
The discovery was the work of four students from four different institutes. Shishir Sankhyayan a PhD student from Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Joe Jacob of Newman College, Kerala, Pratik Dabhade an IUCAA research scholar and Prakash Sarkar from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. The mass of this super cluster extends over the scale of 600 million light years. The IUCAA said in a statement, “Superclusters are the largest coherent structures in the cosmic web. They are a chain of galaxies and galaxy clusters, bound by gravity, often stretching to several hundred times the size of clusters of galaxies, consisting of tens of thousands of galaxies.” Sankhyayan said that, “Our own galaxy is part of a supercluster called the Laniakea supercluster,”
Joydeep the lead author in the journal said the team was astonished to see this “giant wall-like” supercluster. It was visible in a huge spectroscopic survey called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey they said. They further added that supercluster was set in a big network of cosmic filaments which was traced by large voids and clusters. Saraswathi supercluster is further away than Sloan Great Wall and Shapely concentration which is the universe near our universe. The scientists hoped that their work woul shed light upon more complex questions like how these matter-density clusters were formed so many billions before. So we have been introduced a new supercluster called Saraswathi whose pictures look likes city lights in the beauty of night.
