Local Volume

The Local Volume is a collection of more than 500 galaxies located in an area of the observable universe near us, within a spherical region with a radius of 11 megaparsecs from Earth or up to a radial velocity of redshift of z < 0.002 (550 km/s).

[3][4][5] It was in this region of the universe where the Local Volume Legacy (LVL) project took place for the study of 258 galaxies through cycles of observations made by the Spitzer Space Telescope using the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS).

[10] We can also define the Local Volume by the distance of 10 Mpc over which the Hubble Space Telescope can distinguish stellar populations in galaxies.

In the future, it should be possible to extend our definition of Local Volume to even greater distances.

Local Volume galaxies have a preferred movement called virgocentric flow, towards the Virgo cluster, caused by its overwhelming gravity.