# Laniakea Supercluster
**Laniakea Supercluster** is the supercluster of galaxies that contains the [Milky Way](https://www.edgepedia.org/milky-way), defined in 2014 as the basin of attraction, the region of space in which galaxy motions, after removal of the mean cosmic expansion, flow inward toward a common gravitational center. The name comes from the Hawaiian *lani* and *akea* ("heaven" and "spacious"), rendered as "immense heaven".[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) • [2](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/09/03/uh-scientist-maps-supercluster-of-galaxies-names-it-laniakea/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Definition | The volume within a surface where peculiar-velocity flows diverge, like water at a watershed divide; galaxies inside flow toward a shared attractor[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) |
| Discovery | R. Brent Tully, Hélène Courtois, Yehuda Hoffman, and Daniel Pomarède, *Nature* 513, 71–73, published 3 September 2014[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) |
| Size | About 160 megaparsecs across, roughly 500 million light-years[3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7) • [4](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace) |
| Content | Roughly 100,000 galaxies and about 1017 solar masses[3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7) • [4](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace) |
| Major components | The Virgo cluster, the Norma, Hydra, and Centaurus clusters (the Great Attractor region), the Pavo-Indus filament, and voids[3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7) |
| Location of the Milky Way | Near the edge of the supercluster[4](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace) |
| Later reassessment | Cosmicflows-4 data give a slight probabilistic preference for Laniakea to be part of the much larger Shapley basin of attraction[5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02370-0) |
## How it was defined
Superclusters had traditionally been identified as regions with a high concentration of galaxies, but the term was not precise, and the structures seen in spectroscopic surveys form interconnected networks with no clear boundaries.[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) The 2014 work replaced density-based boundaries with a kinematic one. If the distance to each galaxy is directly measured, the peculiar velocity, the line-of-sight departure from the smooth cosmic expansion, can be derived by subtracting the product of distance and the [Hubble constant](https://www.edgepedia.org/hubble-constant) from the observed velocity. Because peculiar velocities arise from gravitational perturbations, a map of them can be translated into a map of the distribution of matter.[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674)
The team built this map from a catalog of peculiar velocities using a [Wiener filter](https://www.edgepedia.org/wiener-filter) reconstruction, in which densities on a grid within the volume are determined from the observed velocity field.[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) Where the reconstructed flows diverge, as water does at watershed divides, a surface of divergent points encloses a region in which all galaxy motions are inward. That contiguous region of inward flow is the supercluster, and the one containing the Milky Way was named Laniakea.[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674) The result was presented as the cover story of the September 4, 2014 issue of *Nature*, with an accompanying video tracing the observed galaxy distribution, the inferred three-dimensional flow pattern, and the underlying matter distribution.[2](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/09/03/uh-scientist-maps-supercluster-of-galaxies-names-it-laniakea/) • [1](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674)
The Hawaiian name was suggested by Nāwaʻa Napoleon, an associate professor of [Hawaiian language](https://www.edgepedia.org/hawaiian-language) and chair of the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and [Literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/literature) at Kapiʻolani Community College.[2](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/09/03/uh-scientist-maps-supercluster-of-galaxies-names-it-laniakea/)
## Structure and contents
Laniakea bundles about a hundred thousand galaxies over a region spanning 500 million light-years.[4](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace) • [6](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/07/10/laniakea-supercluster-mapping/) The *Nature* editorial summary gives the same structure as 160 megaparsecs across and containing 1017 solar masses.[3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7) Its components include the Virgo cluster, which is the nearest rich cluster to the [Local Group](https://www.edgepedia.org/local-group); the Norma, Hydra, and [Centaurus](https://www.edgepedia.org/centaurus) clusters, collectively known as the [Great Attractor](https://www.edgepedia.org/great-attractor) because of their immense gravitational pull; the Pavo-Indus filament; and a number of voids.[3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7) • [6](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/07/10/laniakea-supercluster-mapping/) The Milky Way sits near the edge of the basin, and the flows within it converge toward the Great Attractor region.[4](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace)
The supercluster is embedded in larger flows. Constrained simulations of the local Universe reproduce Laniakea's streamlines converging near [−47, 11, 0] h−1 Mpc, with the basin surrounded by gravitational streams flowing toward the Perseus-Pisces superclusters on one side, Shapley on another, and Coma on a third.[7](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/455/2/2078/1116271) Beyond the boundary itself, the [South Pole Wall](https://www.edgepedia.org/south-pole-wall), a structure identified in 2020, wraps the Laniakea region like an arm, extending in an arc of 200 degrees.[6](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/07/10/laniakea-supercluster-mapping/)
## Mass and size estimates
Tully and colleagues estimate the mass of the supercluster at around 6.5 × 1016 h−1 M⊙ on the scale of the constrained-simulation analysis, in relatively good agreement with simulations that give approximately 2 ± 0.3 × 1016 h−1 M⊙ for a simplified 60 h−1 Mpc-radius sphere centered at [−47, 13, −5] h−1 Mpc.[7](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/455/2/2078/1116271) A 2023 dynamical cosmography based on the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxy distances confirmed the size of Laniakea as 2 × 106 (Mpc h−1)3 and mapped five more watershed superclusters alongside it.[8](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2023/10/aa46802-23/aa46802-23.html)
## Is it a bound structure?
A basin of attraction is a statement about present-day motions, not about a gravitationally bound object. Under a criterion based on future collapse, Chon, Böhringer, and Zaroubi found that for the Local and Shapley superclusters only the central regions will collapse, while Laniakea does not constitute a significant overdensity and will disperse in the future under the accelerating cosmic expansion.[9](https://cris.technion.ac.il/en/publications/on-the-definition-of-superclusters/) Later work has also questioned whether Laniakea is a distinct basin at all: a 2024 [Hamiltonian Monte Carlo](https://www.edgepedia.org/hamiltonian-monte-carlo) reconstruction of the Cosmicflows-4 compilation of 38,000 groups of galaxies found a slight probabilistic preference for Laniakea to be part of the much larger Shapley basin of attraction, suggesting it may be a substructure being pulled toward the more massive Shapley attractor.[5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02370-0)
## Significance
The 2014 definition was the first of superclusters based on dynamics rather than arbitrary density metrics, and it established the basin-of-attraction concept now used to segment the local Universe.[10](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/493/3/3513/5752171) It also revised the cosmic address of the Milky Way: what had been called the [Virgo Supercluster](https://www.edgepedia.org/virgo-supercluster) is a substructure of the much larger Laniakea watershed.[11](https://loklab.org/research/your-cosmic-address/) Subsequent mapping projects, including the Cosmicflows-4 reconstruction and supernova-based kinematic frameworks, continue to refine the boundaries and mass distribution of the basin.[5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02370-0) • [12](https://baas.aas.org/pub/2025n2i467p03/release/1)
## References
1. [Tully, R. B., Courtois, H., Hoffman, Y., & Pomarède, D. (2014). The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies. Nature 513, 71–73.](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13674)
2. [University of Hawaiʻi News (2014). UH scientist maps supercluster of galaxies, names it Laniākea.](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/09/03/uh-scientist-maps-supercluster-of-galaxies-names-it-laniakea/)
3. [Nature editorial summary (2014). Laniakea — a supercluster of our own.](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00384-7)
4. [National Geographic (2014). New Map Locates Milky Way in Neighborhood of 100,000 Galaxies.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140903-galaxy-supercluster-map-laniakea-astronomy-science-ngspace)
5. [Valade, A., Libeskind, N. I., Pomarède, D., et al. (2024). Identification of basins of attraction in the local Universe. Nature Astronomy 8, 1610–1616.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02370-0)
6. [University of Hawaiʻi News (2020). Astronomers map massive structure beyond Laniakea Supercluster.](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/07/10/laniakea-supercluster-mapping/)
7. [Sorce, J. G., et al. (2016). Cosmicflows Constrained Local UniversE Simulations. MNRAS 455, 2078.](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/455/2/2078/1116271)
8. [Dupuy, A., & Courtois, H. M. (2023). Dynamic cosmography of the local Universe: Laniakea and five more watershed superclusters. A&A 678, A176.](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2023/10/aa46802-23/aa46802-23.html)
9. [Chon, G., Böhringer, H., & Zaroubi, S. (2015). On the definition of superclusters. A&A 575, L14.](https://cris.technion.ac.il/en/publications/on-the-definition-of-superclusters/)
10. [Segmenting the Universe into dynamically coherent basins. MNRAS 493, 3513 (2020).](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/493/3/3513/5752171)
11. [LokLab. Your Cosmic Address.](https://loklab.org/research/your-cosmic-address/)
12. [AAS 245 abstract (2025). Determining the Structure and Mass Distribution of the Laniakea Supercluster using Type Ia Supernovae.](https://baas.aas.org/pub/2025n2i467p03/release/1)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Physical world and mathematics › Astronomy › Stars and galaxies › Galaxies and large-scale structure › Galaxy groups, clusters, and large-scale structure › Superclusters*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 15, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026 · Last review: Oct 15, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license