A group of scientists has mapped the exact location of the Milky Way galaxy that rests in what astronomers call a supercluster of galaxies.

This is the first time scientists have created a map combining more than 8,000 galaxies as part of an effort to understand where our galaxy fits in the universe.

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The team discovered the Milky Way Galaxy is located on the outskirts of an unknown and colossal supercluster scientists have named "Laniakea," meaning "immense heaven" in Hawaiian.

Using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope, scientists and astronomers have concluded the Milky Way galaxy is part of this supercluster of galaxies.

They used a new mapping technique that combines the distances among 8,000 nearby galaxies and measures their motion as they are pulled through space by gravity while the universe expands.

With this map, the location of the Milky Way was finally established using the contours that define the supercluster of galaxies, said lead reseracher, R. Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

It's quite similar to finding your hometown located in a much bigger country that also borders other nations.

A video released by the scientific journal, Nature, shows the universe is made up of a vast network of galaxies that look like a massive cosmic web.

Some areas have vast, empty spaces but superclusters of galaxies form densely in other places where these superclusters are the largest in existence.

This new mapping technique also shows a clear delineation of where one supercluster of galaxy ends and where another begins. All these superclusters are all gravitationally sailing in the same gigantic cosmic pool called Laniakea.

Most galaxies are being pulled towards the core of the most dense supercluster called a Great Attractor. Even if the Milky Way is located in the far away edge of Laniakea, the Milky Way is still being pulled towards the Great Atrractor.

Mapping the solar system along with the myriad of galaxies in the universe has been done before. This new study shows it's only a part of something larger which is the Laniakea supercluster.

The Laniakea supercluster spans around 520 million light years in diameter.

With this new map of Laniakea, Tully and his team aims to understand what causes this gigantic gravitational force called the Great Attractor that seems to be pulling millions of galaxies into its core.

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