Discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, the globular cluster M14 is home to over 150,000 stars and has an apparent magnitude of 8.3. It is located 29,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, and is best observed with a telescope during July.
In the summer of 1938, M14 played host to a nova – an extraordinarily rare event in a cluster of its kind. A nova is a sudden stellar eruption where, in just a few days, a star’s brightness increases by a factor of 10,000. Then over the following months the outburst fades away and the star returns to its normal brightness.
