Coma Supercluster
| Coma Supercluster | |
|---|---|
A map of the Coma Supercluster | |
| Observation data (Epoch J2000) | |
| Constellation(s) | Coma Berenices |
| Right ascension | 12h 24m 06.8s |
| Declination | +23d 55m 23s |
| Redshift | 0.023 |
| Distance | 92 Mpc (300 Mly) |
The Coma Supercluster (SCl 117) is a nearby supercluster of galaxies that includes the Coma Cluster (Abell 1656) and the Leo Cluster (Abell 1367).
Located 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices, it is in the center of the Great Wall and a part of the Coma Filament. It is roughly spherical, about 98 mega light-years in diameter, and contains more than 3,000 galaxies.
Although the extent of the Coma Cluster has been understood since around 1900, it took several decades for the existence of the supercluster to be discovered; this was due to the very large physical separation (around 21 Mpc) and angular separation (around 20°) between the Coma and Leo Clusters. In 1977, further analysis of the redshifts of hundreds of galaxies within the supercluster confirmed that these were all part of a larger group of clusters. Despite this, it was still one of the first superclusters to be discovered, and helped astronomers understand the large scale structure of the universe.