Local Volume

The Local Volume is a spherical region centered on the Local Group, containing more than 1,500 galaxies within a radius of 12 megaparsecs from Earth or up to a radial velocity of redshift z < 0.002 (550 km/s). It is notable as the site of the Local Volume Legacy project, which studied 258 galaxies using the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera and Multiband Imaging Photometer, focusing on star formation rates, stellar mass in old populations, cosmic dust, and starlight interference. The Local Volume includes the Local Sheet, a flattened filament about 5 megaparsecs in radius and 0.5 megaparsecs thick, containing roughly 60 galaxies with shared velocity, and the Local Group is part of it. Galaxies in the Local Volume exhibit a virgocentric flow toward the Virgo cluster due to its gravity.