M14 (Globular Cluster)
A big, distant globular cluster in Ophiuchus. It is one of the most massive in the Milky Way, but at about 30,000 light-years it looks fainter than M10 and M12, which are nearly twice as close.
Globular cluster in Ophiuchus. Magnitude 7.9.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 80° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 83° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 13 Jun, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 8.0° south of Cebalrai.
- 10x50 binoculars: A round glow, brighter towards the middle.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): An even, round glow with little central brightening; a larger telescope is needed to resolve it.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 9.9′, 32% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 7.9. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 29,800 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 29,800 years ago.
- True size: 86 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 86 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Globular cluster
- Mass
- About 600,000 times the Sun's mass
- Notable
- Massive: about 595,000 Suns, the 13th heaviest of the 167 globulars in the Baumgardt database.
What is in it, not measured:
- Old stars: among the oldest in the Milky Way
- Stellar remnants: white dwarfs and neutron stars
- Almost no gas or dust
How we know: Distance from Gaia, Hubble and earlier distances to its stars, combined: Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957; Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt, retrieved 2026-10-21 (NGC 6402: 9.14 +/- 0.25 kpc). True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2). Mass: Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt (NGC 6402: 595,000 ± 29,400 Suns), retrieved 2026-10-21; Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957.
More deep-sky objects: IC 4665 (Open Cluster) · M10 (Globular Cluster) · M12 (Globular Cluster) · Eagle Nebula (M16) · NGC 6633 (Open Cluster) · M9 (Globular Cluster)