Void (astronomy)

In astronomy, voids are the empty spaces between filaments, the largest-scale structures in the Universe, that contain very few, or no, galaxies. Voids typically have a diameter of 11 to 150 Mpc; particularly large voids, defined by the absence of rich superclusters, are sometimes called supervoids. Voids located in high-density environments are smaller than voids situated in low-density spaces of the universe.

List of voids

A 1994 census lists a total of 27 supervoids with a distance of up to 740 Mpc.

#	Name	Distance (h-1Mpc)	Diameter (h-1Mpc)
1		134	88
2		207	96
3		216	72
4		241	86
5		129	92
6		236	72
7		248	100
8		201	76
9	Southern Local Supervoid	96	112
10		246	144
11		160	92
12		227	106
13		246	94
14		167	68
15		241	98
16		222	74
17		216	94
18		119	102
19		119	108
20	Boötes void	216	78
21		143	116
22		246	96
23		219	72
24	Northern Local Supervoid	61	104
25		198	74
26		246	80
27		241	70

Not shown in the above chart:

• Capricornus Void
• The Eridanus Supervoid, reported on 24 August 2007 by the NRAO from Very Large Array Sky Survey data, is much larger than these, being about 300 h^-1Mpc in diameter and 1800–3000 h^-1 Mpc distant. It also corresponds to a cold spot in the cosmic microwave background.

Maps

The universe within 1 billion light-years (307 Mpc) of Earth, showing local superclusters and voids.

External links

• Universe family tree: Void
• a few animated views of voids and their distribution from Hume Feldman with Sergei Shandarin, Dept. Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.