This Group contains three large spirals: the Milky Way, M33 and the Andromeda galaxy. m33 lies about 2.4 million light-years away, about 200,000 light-years farther than Andromeda. The Magellanic Clouds are two of four small irregular galaxies in the group. Most of the galaxies, however, are ellipticals and they are smaller still.
Two of the small elliptical galaxies are surrounded by clusters of millions of stars, known as globular clusters. The small ellipticals are found in the southern constellations of Sculptor and Fornax.
The only large ellipstical in the Local Group, Maffei I, is probably as massive as our own Galaxy. It lies 3.3 million light-years away. The Local Group is quite a small cluster of galaxies. The nearest major cluster contains between 1,000 and 2,000 galaxies. It is located in the constellation Virgo and is centred on the powerful active galaxy M87.
But most clusters contain only between about 100 and 400
galaxies. The grouping of galaxies also seems to occur on an even larger
scale. The clusters apparently form part of massive superclusters. Our
Local Group forms part of a supercluster that is dominated by the huge
Virgo cluster. It contains about 100 clusters in a region of space about
250 million light-years across. A cluster of galaxies in Hercules, some
600 milloin light-years away, is part of an even larger supercluster. It
is so large that it spans a third of the sky.
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