Giant Metagalactic Cloud 100,000,000 Light Years Distant, Is Discovered Here

What appears to be an enormous "metagalactic cloud," containing probably 50,000 galaxies similar to our won Milky Way, has been photographed by Harvard astronomers, according to a report published yesterday by Dr.Harlow Shapley, Director of the Harvard Observatory.

Located near the South Pole of the sky, the "cloud" is estimated to be more than a hundred million light years distant from earth. It is in the shape of a narrow stream, probably fifty million light years long by twenty million light years across. Its members are visible only through very powerful telescopes.

Dr.Shapley's report indicates that the find will be of important in the study of the complex space-time matter relationships in our immediate neighborhood--in the region out to a hundred million light years. Hits statement was published in the amateur astronomer's magazine "Telescope," issued at the Harvard Observatory.

The "metagalactic cloud" appeared on the Harvard plates in the course of a survey that is recording all galaxies in the sky brighter than the 18th magnitude. The system first was signaled out as a "major irregularity" in he distribution of faint galaxies in the southern sky, Dr.Shapley said.

Upon closer examination the "Irregularity" revalued itself as a great stream of these tremendous "universes," which are faint only because of their great distance. Each of the "universes" is comparable to our won Milky Way, which has an extreme diameter of more than a hundred thousand light years and a population of hundred billion stars.

For a number of years astronomers have been familiar with supergalaxies,--clusters containing perhaps a few hundred Milky Way systems.