Laniakea Supercluster
Overview
Laniakea is the galaxy supercluster that is home to the Celestial Adjacency, the Andromeda Group and a shed-load of other galaxy clusters.
Facts and Figures
Etymology
Hawaiian for "open skies" or "immense heaven".
Previous or Alternative Name(s)
Lacking the technology to have discovered it for themselves and with no way of accessing knowledge of the discovery (or definition) of it on Earth in 2014, the Calmarendian name for Laniakea is locally undefined. Perhaps, in some seldom told tales, the Wanderers have a name for something of the kind and maybe the Fae have a better understanding of what it is but none of that would be given credence in academic circles.
Size
Laniakea is estimated to stretch, at its maximum extent, across 520 million light years and contain around 100,000 to 150,000 individual galaxies. Establishing exact numbers, however, is almost impossible. We have, of course, technical limitations upon what is observable by any given observer and we cannot overlook the fact that what constitutes a galaxy and where, exactly, is the boundary of Laniakea are both, essentially, based on arbitrary definitions. The biggest problem, however, is establishing a Temporal Frame of Reference: what an observer at one edge of Laniakea (say, on Earth or Calmarendi) may think of as “now” would be half a billion years (or seasons) in the future to an observer at the opposite edge. On this sort of cosmic timescale, there is plenty of time for the universe to expand, for galaxies to merge with one another, for the motions of galaxies and galaxy clusters to change the shape and size of Laniakea from the inside and, according to some projections, Laniakea is destined (and may already have started) to break apart.
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