06/01/2026
Located in the constellation Ophiuchus, M14 is 29,000 light-years away from Earth and best observed in the month of July.
M14 is another of the 29 globular clusters in the Messier list. They are all groups of stars bound tightly together by their gravity, but M14 stands out because in 1938 for a brief few weeks during the summer, it played host to a nova, a stellar eruption where a star grew far brighter than normal for a period of time.
Only twice in history have novae ever been observed in a globular cluster, and this one was even photographed! The photo was taken completely by accident by the 72 inch telescope at the David Dunlap Observatory near Toronto, Canada and the nova itself was only discovered from this picture 25 years later by Amelia Wehlau while looking through old data.
Since then, scientists have tried to find the exact star system of the 150,000 stars in M14 that were the cause of the nova. Finally in 2025, the Hubble Space Telescope was asked to help with decades long search and has managed to narrow it down dramatically.
