Joint ATNF/AAO Colloquium.

Wednesday, 11th October - 3:30pm ATNF Lecture Theatre

The Great Attractor, the Greater Attractor and the origin of the CMB dipole

Will Saunders

Anglo-Australian Observatory

The 'Behind The Plane' extension to the PSCz is now almost completed. Together, they map the 3D distribution of galaxies over 93% of the sky to a depth of at least 20,000km/s. They include the Great Attractor region, and the remaining gaps are small enough to interpolate over with reasonable confidence. This allows the gravity vector on the Local Group to be calculated without the large uncertainty caused by unknown structure behind the Milky Way. Preliminary results suggest that the influence of the Great Attractor is modest, but that structures at much larger distances have unexpected effects, including the apparently spectacular alignment of gravity and velocity.