The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This Integral map (celestial sphere in galactic coordinates) shows the space density of hard X-ray bright Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) in different directions of the sky.
As expected, the distribution of nearby AGNs is indeed strongly anisotropic, meaning that AGNs have non-uniform spatial distribution. For comparison, the green contours show a usual tracer of mass concentrations in the local Universe - the surface density of galaxies identified in the 'IRAS point source catalogue red-shift survey' at distances smaller than 70 megaparsecs, or about 230 million light years.
The large-scale feature in the north-east direction is consistent with the projected position of the highest mass concentrations in the local Universe - the Virgo cluster and the Great Attractor. The south-western structure is consistent with the position of the Perseus-Pisces supercluster.