American astronomer Edwin Hubble (after whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named) coined the term “Local Group” for the galaxies he had identified as moving through space with the Milky Way. The term ...

Our Local Group of galaxies lies on a side street 50 million light-years from the great intersection of two dark matter filaments that created the magnificent Virgo Cluster of about 2,000 galaxies. To ...

For decades, astronomers wondered why most nearby galaxies are speeding away from the Milky Way instead of being pulled in by its gravity. New simulations reveal the answer: our galaxy sits in a ...

The Milky Way — and in fact our entire galactic neighborhood known as the Local Group — appear to be lodged in a vast, extended “sheet” of dark matter flanked on each side by cosmic voids, new ...