This image shows distribution of galaxies in the region around our Milky Way in supergalactic coordinates. Each dot represents a galaxy of typically 100 billion stars. The colors indicate the relative motions of galaxies with accurately measured distances, with shades of green and blue indicating motions toward us and shades of yellow to red indicating motions away from us. Our nearest neighbors have only small relative motions (represented by yellows and greens), as seen best in the exploded view of the right panel. We, along with all these nearest neighbors, are moving together toward the lower right corner of the figures. The result is that all the galaxies in the lower right appear to be moving toward us and all the galaxies in the upper left appear to be moving away, but it is us and our neighbors that are moving. Our motion is represented by the orange arrow. There are two main causes for this motion. The concentration of objects at the right of the figures is the Virgo Cluster and its mass of quadrillion times the Sun causes an attraction indicated by the blue vector in the exploded panel. The red vector in this panel is what is left over and this represents our motion of 600,000 miles-per-hour away from the Local Void.
Univ. of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy