Awesome picture and article

[Damien99]

I was looking at this article and picture of super galaxy clusters.

it is cool to see but why is there a gap on the bottom row is that an error, a cold spot or did the universe collapse on itself lol

[Peter B]

What article? Could you please provide a link.

And there isn't a gap bottom right - there are clearly some red dots there. I don't know why that image is different from all the others, as we don't have any context for the image (hint, hint).

[Peter B]

Okay, sorry, I clicked on the image to find the source.

If you read the notes about the picture you'll see why that dark image was included - because it was selected by exactly the same criteria as the other images.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

To further expand on what Peter B has said:

The universe is not uniform. It doesn't look exactly the same in all directions, Galaxies are not evenly distributed, they form groups and clusters. Galaxy clusters are not evenly distributed, they form superclusters. Even the superclusters are not evenly distributed, they form filaments. The upshot of this is that if you look in some directions you will see far less galaxies than if you look in others, so you will get images which look comparatively blank compared to others. That is what you are seeing in that image in the bottom row, no error, no mystery the space telescope was simply looking at a region that was relatively devoid of galaxies.

Let me show you what I mean on a smaller scale. Here is an image I took of some stars:

 

Now imagine that a telescope is looking at small areas of the sky. I have marked of 4 such areas in the next image.

 

If we look at the area I have labelled 1 you will see that there are bright stars in it:

 

The same is true of the areas I have labelled 2 and 3:

 

 

But if we look at the area I labelled 4 you will see that, whilst there are a few dim stars, there are no bright ones.

 

This is simply a result of the fact that bright stars are not evenly distributed in the night sky. As it is with stars so it is with galaxies.

I hope that makes it clear.

 

[Damien99]

5 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

To further expand on what Peter B has said:

The universe is not uniform. It doesn't look exactly the same in all directions, Galaxies are not evenly distributed, they form groups and clusters. Galaxy clusters are not evenly distributed, they form superclusters. Even the superclusters are not evenly distributed, they form filaments. The upshot of this is that if you look in some directions you will see far less galaxies than if you look in others, so you will get images which look comparatively blank compared to others. That is what you are seeing in that image in the bottom row, no error, no mystery the space telescope was simply looking at a region that was relatively devoid of galaxies.

Let me show you what I mean on a smaller scale. Here is an image I took of some stars:

 

Now imagine that a telescope is looking at small areas of the sky. I have marked of 4 such areas in the next image.

 

If we look at the area I have labelled 1 you will see that there are bright stars in it:

 

The same is true of the areas I have labelled 2 and 3:

 

 

But if we look at the area I labelled 4 you will see that, whilst there are a few dim stars, there are no bright ones.

 

This is simply a result of the fact that bright stars are not evenly distributed in the night sky. As it is with stars so it is with galaxies.

I hope that makes it clear.

 

Thank you