New map of the Milky Way

American astronomers introduced a new map of the Milky Way, first identifying its location in an area of ​​100,000 galaxies.

>>>Europe postpones its mission to map the Milky Way

Across the universe, galaxies tend to clump together into giant structures that astronomers call super-constellations .

Inside the orange circle is super-Laniakea, and the Milky Way is the black spot on the screen - (Photo: CEA / Saclay)

According to the new map, our Milky Way is present near the edge of the Laniakea super-constellation , with a diameter spanning 500 million light-years and encompassing about 100,000 galaxies.

Laniakea means infinite paradise in the local language of Hawaii (USA).

And this area is just a slice of the visible universe, which spans over 90 billion light-years.

'The map will give us a sense of our position in the vast universe , ' says Nature astronomer Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii.

This is not the first time scientists have attempted to map the Milky Way's surrounding area, but previous maps did not identify which galaxies bound together by gravity to form super Laniakea constellation.

Experts Tully and colleagues identified Laniakea and its inhabitants by analyzing how galaxies move through space.