What is the Great Attractor?
From an astronimical point of view :-
From an astrological point of view :-
From an astronimical point of view :-
There’s a strange place in the sky where everything is attracted. And unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the Milky Way, so we can’t see it. What could be doing all this attracting?
Just where the heck are we going? We’re snuggled in our little Solar System, hurtling through the cosmos at a blindingly fast of 2.2 million kilometers per hour. We’re always orbiting this, and drifting through that, and it’s somewhere out in the region that’s not as horrifically terrifying as what some of our celestial neighbors go through. But where are we going? Just around in a great big circle? Or an ellipse? Which is going around in another circle… and it’s great big circles all the way up?
Not exactly… Our galaxy and other nearby galaxies are being pulled toward a specific region of space. It’s about 150 million light years away, and here is the best part. We’re not exactly sure what it is. We call it the Great Attractor.
Part of the reason the Great Attractor is so mysterious is that it happens to lie in a direction of the sky known as the “Zone of Avoidance”. This is in the general direction of the center of our galaxy, where there is so much gas and dust that we can’t see very far in the visible spectrum. We can see how our galaxy and other nearby galaxies are moving toward the great attractor, so something must be causing things to go in that direction. That means either there must be something massive over there, or it’s due to something even more strange and fantastic.
When evidence of the Great Attractor was first discovered in the 1970s, we had no way to see through the Zone of Avoidance. But while that region blocks much of the visible light from beyond, the gas and dust doesn’t block as much infrared and x-ray light. As x-ray astronomy became more powerful, we could start to see objects within that region. What we found was a large supercluster of galaxies in the area of the Great Attractor, known as the Norma Cluster. It has a mass of about 1,000 trillion Suns. That’s thousands of galaxies.
What Is The Great Attractor?
There’s a strange place in the sky where everything is attracted. And unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the Milky Way, so we can’t see it. What could be doing all this attracting? Just where the heck are we going? We’re snuggled in our little Solar System, hurtling through the cosmos at a...
www.universetoday.com
A busy patch of space has been captured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Scattered with many nearby stars, the field also has numerous galaxies in the background.
Located on the border of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) and Norma (The Carpenter’s Square), this field covers part of the Norma Cluster (Abell 3627) as well as a dense area of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
The Norma Cluster is the closest massive galaxy cluster to the Milky Way, and lies about 220 million light-years away. The enormous mass concentrated here, and the consequent gravitational attraction, mean that this region of space is known to astronomers as the Great Attractor, and it dominates our region of the Universe.
The largest galaxy visible in this image is ESO 137-002, a spiral galaxy seen edge on. In this image from Hubble, we see large regions of dust across the galaxy’s bulge. What we do not see here is the tail of glowing X-rays that has been observed extending out of the galaxy — but which is invisible to an optical telescope like Hubble.
Observing the Great Attractor is difficult at optical wavelengths. The plane of the Milky Way — responsible for the numerous bright stars in this image — both outshines (with stars) and obscures (with dust) many of the objects behind it. There are some tricks for seeing through this — infrared or radio observations, for instance — but the region behind the center of the Milky Way, where the dust is thickest, remains an almost complete mystery to astronomers.
NASA - Hubble Focuses on "the Great Attractor"
Hubble captured a busy patch of space, scattered with many nearby stars. The field also has numerous galaxies in the background.
www.nasa.gov
From an astrological point of view :-
At a distance of some 65 Mega-parsecs away, in the general direction of Centaurus, a massive galactic anomaly quietly does its work. This enigma slowly sips upon a liquid-like flow of galaxies drawing them into its huge gravitational grip, following in a river-like stream at an astonishing 600 km/sec. This migration of galactic matter includes the extensive Virgo Cluster, the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, other groups and clusters and the Local Group - that would be us and our 30 plus galactic companions. For approximately 60 Mega-parsecs both upstream and downstream from us in this river, everything heads in the direction of the galactic cluster, Abell 3627. This astrophysical enigma is both huge and perplexing - thus, its unofficial, official namesake: The Great Attractor!
What the Great Attractor is remains a mystery. It clearly reveals relativistic characteristics - those of warping time and space while bending light with its massive gravity. But it lacks the event horizon required for it to be a black hole. This point demonstrates the radio source energy common within a Quasi-Stellar Object (Quasar). It shows strong retreat tendencies through its extreme red shift. Contradictorily, it has a huge ultraviolet contingent, just outside the range of blue to violet light. The variability of visible light shows in its notably broad absorption beams.
The enormous gravity of the Great Attractor actually bends light around it. It bends the light so much, that a glimpse of what is behind it can be taken. This quality of gravitational lensing provides clear behind the scenes insights, while simultaneously offering other refractive illusions. All we truly know is that it’s big.
Several interesting factors immediately jump about the physical operation of the Great Attractor (GA). First, it recedes from us at a fantastically high velocity, as indicated by its red shift. At the same time the extreme ultraviolet energy coming from beyond the opposite end of the light spectrum renders an approaching appearance. While this complex point actively recedes, it summons an energy of “come hither.” Once engaged, this pull exceeds anything known. The attraction to this point possesses a seductive tone, but in a classical Sagittarian mode. There’s something about it. It seems to possess this energy - it’s mysterious, it’s captivating, it might even be a direct personification of the Creator! Regardless, it knows something you have to know. One thinks, “While the path into the Great Attractor might tear me apart with unimaginable tidal forces, flood me inside and out with radiation of unknown proportion or whatever, I simply must seek out this knowledge.” If fact, the knowledge factors of this enigma are so strong that one will risk the factuality of their own beliefs in the interest of pure knowledge. Issues of rightness, wrongness and fallibility fail to matter here. The matter is knowing the way it all really works.
The Great Attractor
www.philipsedgwick.com
It’s a weird physics thing, but the entire galaxy is moving toward the Great Attractor. And it is in Sagittarius! This sci-fi level time-light-space-gravity-mind bender of astronomical fuqery is in the middle of Sagittarius! Apart from the perspective-restoring fact that our galaxy and many others are being inextricably drawn toward this, um, thing, what does it mean for us astrologically? The extreme new age types believe that spunky space beings, Mayans, arch-angels, and so forth could dwell within the Great Attractor. Maybe we can all vibe right and hasten the attracting. But seriously, a glance across any tabloid could convince anyone that our planetary visa would be quickly revoked if we had to have big-time auric integrity to gain entry. Do You Have The Sun, Moon or Planets Conjunct The Great Attractor? It is at 14 Sagittarius. I have my South Node there – maybe i CAME from there? Noam Chomsky, Nicki Minaj, Jim Morrison, Mary – Queen of Scots, Tom Waits, James Thurber, Kim Basinger and Sinead O’Connor all have their SUN conjunct the Great Attractor. If you were born December 6 to 8, then so do you.