Void (astronomy)

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In astronomy, voids are the empty spaces between filaments, the largest-scale structures in the Universe, that contain very few, or no, galaxies. Voids typically have a diameter of 11 to 150 Mpc; particularly large voids, defined by the absence of rich superclusters, are sometimes called supervoids. Voids located in high-density environments are smaller than voids situated in low-density spaces of the universe.

List of voids

A 1994 census lists a total of 27 supervoids with a distance of up to 740 Mpc. A selection is given below:

#	Name	Distance (Mpc)	Diameter (Mpc)
1		188	124
5		182	130
9	Southern Local Supervoid	135	158
18		168	144
19		168	152
20	Boötes void	304	110
21		201	163
24	Northern Local Supervoid	86	146

Not shown in the above chart:

• Capricornus Void
• The Eridanus Supervoid, reported on 24 August 2007 by the NRAO from Very Large Array Sky Survey data, is much larger than these, being about 300 Mpc in diameter and 1800–3000 Mpc distant. It also corresponds to a cold spot in the cosmic microwave background.

Maps

External links

• Universe family tree: Void
• a few animated views of voids and their distribution from Hume Feldman with Sergei Shandarin, Dept. Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.

References

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Last updated on Saturday January 26, 2008 at 20:10:23 PST (GMT -0800)
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