Abell 1763 is a rich cluster of galaxies approximately 2 billion lightyears away from our own Milky Way. In the rendering below we highlight three main sections of the cluster: its core, outskirts, and a filament which connects to a nearby poor cluster Abell 1770). The high density of galaxies at the core of the clustre is encircled by a 2.5Mpc purple sphere. The extent of the filament is illustrated as a grey wireframe tube. The galaxies that populate the supercluster are positioned by defining their true right ascentions, declinations and photometric redshift, scaled by a factor or 100, 100, and 300, respectively in order to better visualize the galaxies.

You'll also notice a myriad of colors and shapes in the rendering. Those galaxies with bright r-magnitudes are colored red and drawn as ellipticals. Optically blue galaxies are colored blue, and given a disky shape. Notice a large concentration of large, red galaxies in the core of our cluster. Finally, some galaxies have very high star formation rates and emit lots of light in the mid-infrared. They are colored green in our rendering. The size of the galaxies are not to scale with the dimensions of the cluster, but represent the brightness of the galaxy. In this way, the larger galaxies in the redering are in general the most massive. Zoom to the center of the cluster to check on the Brightest Cluster Galaxy, a massive red galaxy at the heart of the system.

Left clicking to rotate, right click to pan, and scroll to zoom in and out. Good luck.

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Rendering by Eric Ho, during a Yale Freshman Research Fellowship (2013)