South Pole Wall

The South Pole Wall is a vast concentration of galaxies extending across the southern sky, discovered in 2020 and spanning roughly 1.4 billion light-years.

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Large-scale structure of the universe: The organization of matter in the universe into galaxies, groups, clusters, filaments, and vast voids. The wall is one feature in this larger cosmic web.
Galaxy redshift survey: An astronomical survey that measures galaxy positions and redshifts to map large-scale structure. Survey data revealed the wall as a connected concentration rather than isolated galaxies.
Laniakea Supercluster: The supercluster-scale region of galaxies that includes the Milky Way and is defined by coherent galaxy flows. It is a nearby flow-defined structure, unlike the wall’s description as a galaxy concentration.
Cosmic void: A vast region of space containing far fewer galaxies than the cosmic average. Voids surrounding dense structures help define where a wall begins and ends.
Galaxy cluster: A gravitationally bound system containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies, along with hot gas and dark matter. Clusters contribute dense knots of galaxies within the wall.
Peculiar velocity: An object's motion relative to the uniform expansion of the universe. Local motions can distort distances inferred directly from galaxy redshifts.
Sloan Great Wall: A large galaxy superstructure identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It is another named wall used to compare the scale of cosmic structures.
Cosmic variance: The uncertainty in cosmological measurements caused by observing only a finite volume of the universe. Limited sky coverage complicates claims about the wall’s full size and continuity.
Cosmic web: The universe’s network of galaxies and matter arranged in filaments, sheets, and nodes separated by voids. The wall is a prominent, wall-like part of this network.
Cosmicflows-3: A catalog of galaxy distances and motions assembled to map nearby cosmic structure. Its distance measurements helped trace the wall’s position and shape.