Hidden Giant Behind the Milky Way: Vela Supercluster Rewrites Our Local Gravity
Astronomers using the CosmicFlows dataset and new redshifts from SALT and MeerKAT have shown the Vela Supercluster, located behind the Milky Way in the Zone of Avoidance, is far larger and more massive than once thought—about 33,800 trillion solar masses across roughly 300 million light-years. Comprising two walls of galaxy clusters moving toward each other, it exerts a gravitational pull rivaling or exceeding the Great Attractor and helps explain local galaxy motions, effectively completing a map of a major gravitational player hidden behind our galaxy.
