Cosmography alert 🚨
Hidden Vela Supercluster Revealed by First Hybrid Redshift & Peculiar Velocity Reconstruction
by Amber M. Hollinger and co-authors
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09339
#Cosmography #Cosmology #Cosmicflows #Vela #supercluster #VelaSupercluster #Laniakea #LaniakeaSupercluster #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #science #news
A large fraction of the extragalactic sky is obscured by foreground dust and stars along the plane of the Milky Way, leaving a major gap (~ 20%) in whole-sky maps of large-scale structures -- an incompleteness that is even more severe for peculiar velocity samples. This has long limited an unambiguous interpretation of observed cosmic flows and their connection to the underlying mass-density field. We present a new hybrid reconstruction methodology which combines 65,518 galaxy peculiar velocity distances from the CF4++ catalogue (Courtois2025) with 8283 new galaxy redshifts observed near the southern Galactic plane (|b| <= 10 degrees) Zone of Avoidance. A major advance is the inclusion of 2176 high-sensitivity, interferometric HI redshifts obtained with the SARAO MeerKAT telescope which for the first time provide coverage of the innermost 3degrees-wide strip of the southern ZOA and to unprecedented depth. This hybrid redshifts & peculiar velocities approach yields a substantially revised view of the inferred overdensities in and around the ZOA. In particular, the Vela supercluster emerges as a dominant mass concentration, rivaling the Shapley concentration and exceeding the mass associated with Laniakea and the Great Attractor region. With a total mass of 33.8 10^16 Msol, a characteristic radius of 70 hmpc, and a double core morphology at a distance of 189 hmpc, Vela dominates the mass budget and gravitational influence of the southern Zone of Avoidance. These results provide the most complete and dynamically consistent picture to date of the southern Zone of Avoidance and demonstrate the transformative potential of hybrid reconstruction techniques tailored for the next generation of large-scale surveys.
After the King Ghidorah Supercluster (https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.11970) and Mothra, an extremely magnified monster star (https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10363), here is another cosmic object named after a kaiju: a yellow supergiant, Hedorah, named in honor of the famous yellow-eyed Kaiju: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11704
#Kaiju #Astronomy #Hedorah #Mothra #KingGhidorah #Ghidorah #Godzilla #Astrodon #Astrophysics #galaxies #star #stars #supergiant #supercluster #science #news #Toho #movies #space #culture #popculture
Cosmography alert 🚨
Revisiting the Great Attractor: The Local Group's streamline trajectory, cosmic velocity and dynamical fate
by Richard Stiskalek and co-authors (incl. @AstroMikeHudson)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08524
#Cosmography #GreatAttractor #Cosmology #galaxies #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #science #news #LocalGroup #Laniakea #supercluster #LaniakeaSupercluster
We revisit the Great Attractor using the Manticore-Local suite of digital twins of the nearby Universe. The Great Attractor concept has been proposed as an answer to three distinct questions: what sources the Local Group velocity in the cosmic microwave background frame, where present-day velocity streamlines converge, and where the Local Group is moving to. Addressing the original motivation of the Great Attractor -- explaining the Local Group cosmic velocity -- we find that mass within $155~h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$ accounts for only ${\sim}72\%$ of that velocity magnitude with ${\sim}38\,°$ directional offset. We show that even in the purely linear regime convergence within this volume is not guaranteed, particularly when also accounting for small-scale contributions to the observer velocity; no single structure, including the proposed Great Attractor, would be expected to dominate the velocity budget. Streamline convergence is smoothing-scale-dependent, transitioning from Virgo at small scales through the Hydra--Centaurus region at intermediate scales to Shapley at large scales; at intermediate smoothing the convergence point lies near Abell 3565 with an asymmetric basin of mass $\log( M / (h^{-1} \mathrm{M}_\odot)) = 16.4 \pm 0.1$ that excludes Norma. To address the third question, we evolve the Manticore-Local realisations to scale factor $a = 10$ in a new Beyond-Present-Time simulation suite and identify the asymptotic future location of the Local Group. We find that the dominant motion is towards Virgo, but even it contributes at most one third of the Local Group velocity. Our results demonstrate that the classical Great Attractor is not a dynamically dominant structure but an artifact of the instantaneous velocity field, and that no single attractor is likely to account for the Local Group motion in the cosmic rest frame.
#KnowledgeBit: A #Supercluster is a large group of smaller galaxy clusters or galaxy groups; they are among the largest known structures in the universe.
The #MilkyWay is part of the Local Group galaxy group (which contains more than 54 galaxies), which in turn is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which is part of the #Laniakea Supercluster.
The number of superclusters in the observable universe is estimated to be 10 million.
The £1 Billion Blueprint: Scotland’s Games Action Is Ready – We Need You To Help Launch It.
Dear friends, colleagues (and the entire Scottish games community) I need to talk to you honestly about where we are – and ask for your help.
We are at the final milestone. After two years of intensive consultation, data-gathering, extensive feedback and planning, Scotland’s Games Action Plan is finished and ready for launch.
I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Business Minister Richard Lochhead and his team. I ran them through the high-level strategy, the compelling ROI, and the timeline for delivery. The meeting was a success. We are aligned on the need to move from fragmentation to a unified, £1 billion goal for Scotland’s games ecosystem by 2030.
Launching Scotland’s Games Action Plan
As many of you know, the planned launch at the Games Cross-Party Groups in September – and then November – did not take place due to conflicting parliamentary business. I’m working with the co-chairs to set new dates for the CPG in 2026, but that leaves the Games Action Plan in limbo.
I’ll be entirely honest: The Games Action Plan is too important and too urgent to wait for dates later next year. We cannot risk losing momentum or allowing this definitive community vision to be sidelined. This is not a piece of paper – it represents a vision for our future – and the enormous potential of Scotland’s whole games sector.
The Games Action Plan was built by the community – now I need to ask the community to help launch it.
A Personal Invitation: Join Us to Launch the Games Action Plan
Following the principles of the ‘Honest Architect’, I am reaching out directly to all of you – the developers, the educators, the artists, and the business leaders who believe in this vision. We are turning this hurdle into a powerful, public declaration and launch of our hard work.
We are inviting partners to co-launch the Games Action Plan in January 2026
To make this the high-impact launch this transformative strategy deserves, we are looking for partners to provide:
I am happy to offer launch partners the opportunity to have their logo in the final version of the Action Plan and a chance to actively and publicly support a project which aims to radically change the way games are understood and supported in Scotland, enable the creation of the UK’s first games ‘supercluster’ and create a billion-dollar industry within the next five years.
This Action Plan is a fully integrated system: it creates the role of a ‘Chief Games Officer‘ who will work with Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur to guarantee high-yield funding (based on proven existing ROI models), and brings cross-sectoral innovation to the heart of the national agenda.
This is the blueprint. We have worked together (250+ companies, organisations and individuals from across Scotland, the UK and worldwide) to create the mandate. We need your help to give this transformative strategy the launch it deserves, ensuring the whole country knows the future of Scottish games is ready to begin now.
We need to act now. If your organisation wants to stand with the community and co-launch this transformative strategy in January 2026, please email me directly to discuss a partnership. The future of Scottish games starts with us.
~Brian
#CPG #event #games #GamesActionPlan #government #launch #scotland #strategy #SuperCluster
in the #arXiv
Dissecting the Perseus-Pisces supercluster observed with CFHT-MegaCam: Investigating environmental effects on galaxy morphology
by Maëlie Mondelin and co-authors
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05925
#galaxies #cosmicweb #PerseusPisces #supercluster #astronomy #astrophysics #astrodon #science #CFHT #Megacam #cosmology
Daniel Fischer
Daniel Pomarède
Knowledge Zone
scottishgames
skotperez
WYM Mod