Object Analysis

The CfA2 Great Wall (also known as the Coma Wall) was one of the first massive superstructures discovered in the universe. It is a vast filament of galaxies located approximately 200 million light-years away. It measures over 500 million light-years in length and 300 million light-years in width, yet it is only 15 million light-years thick.

Discovered in 1989 by Margaret Geller and John Huchra, the Great Wall consists of thousands of galaxies, including the prominent Coma Cluster and Hercules Cluster. Its discovery challenged existing models of the early universe, as cosmologists struggled to explain how such an immense structure could have formed in the time since the Big Bang.

We now understand that the Great Wall is a "node" in the cosmic web—the large-scale structure of the universe where gravity has pulled galaxies into long, thin filaments separated by vast, empty voids. It represents one of the largest bound structures in our local corner of the cosmos.