The South Pole Wall (SPW or The South Pole Wall) is a massive cosmic structure formed by a giant wall of galaxies (a galaxy filament) that extends across at least 1.37 billion light-years of space, the nearest light (and consequently part)[a] of which is aged about half a billion light-years.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The structure, in its astronomical angle, is dense in five known places including one very near to the celestial South Pole and is, according to the international team of astronomers that discovered the South Pole Wall, "...the largest contiguous feature in the local volume and comparable to the Sloan Great Wall at half the distance ...".[1] Its discovery was announced by Daniel Pomarède of Paris-Saclay University and R. Brent Tully and colleagues of the University of Hawaiʻi in July 2020.[1] Pomarède explained, "One might wonder how such a large and not-so distant structure remained unnoticed. This is due to its location in a region of the sky that has not been completely surveyed, and where direct observations are hindered by foreground patches of galactic dust and clouds. We have found it thanks to its gravitational influence, imprinted in the velocities of a sample of galaxies".[3]
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- ^ a b c Pomarède, Daniel; Tully, R. Brent; Graziani, Romain; et al. (July 2020). "Cosmicflows-3: The South Pole Wall". The Astrophysical Journal. 897 (2): 133. arXiv:2007.04414. Bibcode:2020ApJ...897..133P. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab9952. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 220425419.
- ^ Pomarede, D.; Tully, R. B.; Courtois, H. M.; et al. (2020). "The South Pole Wall". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 235: 453.01. Bibcode:2020AAS...23545301P.
- ^ a b "Astronomers map massive structure beyond Laniakea Supercluster". University of Hawaii. 10 July 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
- ^ Overbye, Dennis (10 July 2020). "Beyond the Milky Way, a Galactic Wall - Astronomers have discovered a vast assemblage of galaxies hidden behind our own, in the "zone of avoidance."". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
- ^ Mann, Adam (10 July 2020). "Astronomers discover South Pole Wall, a gigantic structure stretching 1.4 billion light-years across". Live Science. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
- ^ Starr, Michelle (14 July 2020). "A Giant 'Wall' of Galaxies Has Been Found Stretching Across The Universe". ScienceAlert.com. Retrieved 19 July 2020.