The
Virgo Supercluster or
Local Supercluster is the
supercluster of
galaxies that contains the
Local Group and with it our galaxy, the
Milky Way. It has a pancake like shape of a flattened disk, with a diameter of about 200 million
light years (see
1 E24 m for a list of comparable lengths). It contains about 100
groups and clusters of galaxies and is dominated by the
Virgo cluster near its center. The Local Group is located near the edge and is drawn towards the Virgo cluster.
By tracking its gravitational effect on the movement of galaxies, one can estimate that the total mass of the Virgo Supercluster is about 1015 solar masses (see 1 E45 kg[?] for a list of comparable masses). As its luminosity is far too small for this number of stars, it is thought that a large part of its mass is dark matter.
Large-scale structure of the cosmos,
Extragalactic astronomy