Galaxy clusters are the final resting places for galaxies like the Milky Way. These clusters contain the remains of hundreds to thousands of massive galaxies that are gravitationally bound together

Galaxies in galaxy clusters become “red-and-dead” faster than galaxies in less dense areas. This is due to the constant gas stripping and many mergers that occur in these environments. 

Galaxy clusters have a concentrated central core and a well-defined spherical structure. They are divided by their richness, which is the number of galaxies within 1.5 Mpc of the center

Even after galaxy clusters form, surrounding galaxies and galaxy groups, including initially Milky Way-like galaxies, get drawn in. Over time, they will lose their gas and eventually cease forming new stars. This is often the fate of even initially Milky Way-like galaxies as they fall into galaxy clusters

According to Big Think, galaxy clusters are graveyards for galaxies like the Milky Way. Galaxies in these environments become “red-and-dead” faster than galaxies in less dense areas

A galaxy cluster is a collection of hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They are the second-largest known gravitationally bound structures in the universe. 

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that includes the Solar System. It’s a huge collection of stars, dust, and gas. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a hazy band of light because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. 

Astronomers believe that galaxy clusters form when clumps of dark matter and their associated galaxies are pulled together by gravity. Dark matter, like normal matter, has gravity, so it pulls galaxies toward it, causing them to clump

Galaxies within a cluster are generally considered to be bound together by their mutual gravitational pulls. They each orbit around their common center of mass. 

Most galaxies are not alone in the vast expanse of space, but are connected to one or more other galaxies by gravity. The same force that holds you onto the Earth can keep many individual galaxies bound together. 

Galaxies are not distributed uniformly throughout space. Most are clumped together in clusters and superclusters that are evidently held together by gravity due to dark matter between the galaxies.

The Milky Way is not part of a galaxy cluster. Instead, it’s part of a small group called the Local Group, which is located on a lobe of the Virgo supercluster. The Local Group is about 10 million light-years across and contains more than 35 galaxies

Some examples of galaxy clusters include:

• Virgo Cluster The closest rich cluster, containing at least 150 large galaxies and thousands of small ones. This cluster dominates the surrounding space and influences most of the neighboring groups gravitationally. 
• Coma Cluster A rich cluster of galaxies containing thousands of systems. It’s located about 330 million light-years away, about seven times farther than the Virgo cluster. 
• Hercules Cluster One of the most prominent galaxy groupings seen in the northern hemisphere’s night sky. It’s home to more than 100,000 individual stars. Other examples of galaxy clusters include: Fornax Cluster, Great Attractor, Norma Cluster.

The Perseus Cluster, for example, has more than a thousand galaxies and is one of the most luminous sources of X-rays in the sky. Galaxy clusters are home to the biggest galaxies in the known universe, and provide us with information about the structure of the universe on the largest scales

A typical galaxy cluster contains 50–1,000 galaxies. The galaxies only make up about 2% of the cluster’s total mass

Galaxy clusters are often associated with larger groups called superclusters. The Laniakea Supercluster, for example, is made up of about 100,000 galaxies. 

A galaxy cluster is considered rich if it contains more than 1,000 galaxies. A poor galaxy cluster, which contains less than 1,000 galaxies, is sometimes called a group

The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is the largest known structure in the universe, measuring about 10 billion light-years across. It’s so wide that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the entire structure

The Virgo Cluster is the largest nearby cluster of galaxies, containing about a thousand galaxies and spanning about ten million light-years. 

“The Fat One” (El Gordo) is the largest distant galaxy cluster observed as of 2011. It has the mass of three million billion suns

Galaxies in denser environmentsbecome “red-and-dead” faster than galaxies in less dense areas

Astronomers sometimes refer to elliptical galaxies as “red and dead” because of their low rate of star formation and their populations of old, red stars. 

In denser environments, “red and dead” elliptical galaxies dominate, while star-forming spirals are more commonly found in less dense environments. 

When a galaxy enters a rich, massive cluster, it can have two “murderous factors”:

• Major merger A single major merger can use up all the gas in both progenitor galaxies, leading to a red-and-dead elliptical galaxy. 
• Gas stripping A map of neutral hydrogen overlaid on the galaxy D100 in the Coma Cluster shows how much gas is being quickly stripped from this galaxy as it travels through the cluster. Some believe that “red and dead” galaxies formed long ago by violent processes in a high-density environment.

Older galaxies are redder because they have a higher concentration of low-mass red stars. This is because high-mass blue stars are short-lived, and massive stars burn out first, leaving only smaller, cooler stars

As galaxies age, they change color from blue to red. This is because younger galaxies form new stars, which give off ultraviolet and blue light. Older galaxies contain old stars, which give off red light, and create fewer new stars. 

Galaxies can also appear redder if they contain large amounts of dust

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