Nova Cannon
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The Nova Cannon is a weapon -- no, THE weapon Battlefleet Gothic, that fires 50 meter in diameter shells at near-light speed. It is noteworthy for the fact that it creates small blast templates. This may not sound all that impressive until you remember that in Battlefleet Gothic the centre of the base represents a spaceship the size of a hive city. So on this scale, a nova cannon's blast is equivalent to the K-T extinction that wiped out the large dinosaurs. In one shot. Just think about that. That's the sort of Grade A fucking insane "Humanity Fuck Yeah" ridiculously violent scale we're dealing with in Battlefleet Gothic. This is why it is awesome. It allows something like this to exist.
What this mad bastard actually is varies depending on who you ask. Is it a railgun? A vortex missile? Every damn bit of explosive on a Forge World shoved in one container? No-one is entirely sure, but one thing is certain. If an enemy ship has a Nova Cannon you stay the hell away from that magnificent beast unless you wish to suffer sudden massive existence failure. I'm not even joking. Just stay the fuck away.
Alternatively you can just spread your fleet. Seriously. Nova-cannon equipped ships are only effective against clustered formations, and generally despite its awesome AOE, the Nova blast is not powerful enough to guarantee one-shotting anything caught in it, unless it's an escort, an interceptor wing or torpedo volley. Additionally they have a looong reload time, and it's even longer if the ship crew is not of the top quality. Hence why Imperial fleet admirals despise Dominator-class cruisers (armed with Nova Cannon and little else) and always prefer more reliable ships unless fighting 'Nids and Orks, whose ships DO tend to form in tight formations.
History
In the original version of the Battlefleet Gothic rules, the range on the Nova Cannon was prefaced with the letter "G" for "Guess" -- the firing player would guess the distance from the firing ship to the target, and then place the template that distance along the firing line (as determined by a tape measure). This system was also used for artillery in Warhammer 40,000. An eagle-eyed player could nail the target every time. In the transition from fourth to fifth edition, artillery was changed from a guess-range system to a hit-or-scatter system, and so when Battlefleet Gothic was revised, the same change was made to Nova Cannon shots.