LMR-068 · Galaxies
Local Group
Our cosmic neighborhood. A few dozen galaxies, tightly bound.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
Galaxies are usually not alone — most belong to small clumps that hang out together, held by their pull on each other, like cosmic book clubs. Our Milky Way is in one of these clumps. There's us, there's our big neighbour Andromeda, there's a smaller spiral called Triangulum, and then dozens of much smaller little galaxies tagging along — about eighty in total. The whole little family is called the Local Group. It's our galactic neighbourhood. We know everybody. They mostly keep to themselves.
§ Strange but true
- 01Our gravitational neighborhood: about 80 galaxies, dominated by the Milky Way and Andromeda.
- 02It spans 10 million light-years and is itself falling toward the Virgo Supercluster.
- 03Most of our neighbors are dwarfs — small, faint galaxies orbiting the two giants.
§ From the field journal
Local Group
"Our cosmic neighborhood. A few dozen galaxies, tightly bound."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby
Constellations near Local Group
→
Galaxy
A herd of a hundred billion stars, held together by gravity and dark matter.
→
Andromeda
Our nearest big neighbor. Will collide with us in 4.5 billion years.
→
Dark Matter
Most of the universe is invisible. We only see its footprints.
→
Dark Energy
Something is pushing space apart faster, and we have no idea what.