The Universe Nearby

Explanation: What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows nearly 50,000 galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) in infrared light . The resulting image is an incredible tapestry of galaxies that provides limits on how the universe formed and evolved . The dark band across the image center is blocked by dust in the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy . Away from the Galactic plane, however, each dot represents a galaxy , color coded to indicate distance. Bluer dots represent the nearer galaxies in the 2MASS survey, while redder dots indicating the more distant survey galaxies that lie at a redshift near 0.1. Named structures are annotated around the edges. Many galaxies are gravitationally bound together to form clusters , which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters , which in turn are sometimes seen to align over even larger scale structures .