Based on work by Gerard de Vaucouleurs in the 1950s, astronomers have thought of our galaxy as being on the edge of the so-called
Local Supercluster, a structure about 100 million light-years wide that's centered on the Virgo Cluster.
This newly discovered concentration of clusters packed with galaxies falls on a line nearly a billion light-years long that also runs through the Great Attractor, the
local supercluster (which includes our own galaxy) and another large aggregation known as the Perseus-Pisces supercluster.
The Milky Way and our Local Group of galaxies lie in the outer fringe of the Virgo Cluster's extended domain (known as the
Local Supercluster), so we may be part of the same filament ourselves.
Our Local Group resides in the outskirts of the
Local Supercluster, first identified in the early 1950s by Gerard de Vaucouleurs, which has the Virgo Cluster as its core.
They were even found associated with our own
local supercluster of galaxies in the direction of the constellation Virgo.
Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), their search for these objects in the
local supercluster revealed not only spirals and dwarf irregulars, but also some possibly interacting systems as well as rare miniature spirals.
It is the center of what cosmologists call the
Local Supercluster, which includes the Milky Way on its fringe.