Astronomers working on the Sload Digital Sky Survey noticed a star that - according to our understanding of how stars form - shouldn't exist at all.

Here's the story of the "Caffau's Star":

... according to conventional star-formation theory, the object people are now calling "Caffau's star" shouldn't exist at all. It's very deficient in two elements — carbon and iron — that many theorists believe are critical components for normal stars to form. It's also deficient in lithium, which is not essential for a star to take shape but ought to be present all the same. Wonders Caffau's co-author Hans-Gunter Ludwig, also at Heidelberg and Paris: "Where has [the lithium] gone?

Link

When you think of stars, do you think a hot ball of plasma in space? (I mean, our own Sun has a surface temperature of approximately 5,800 K). Well, not all stars are hot: a newly discovered star 75 light-years away from us is no warmer than a cup of coffee.

Dubbed CFBDSIR 1458 10b, the star is what’s called a brown dwarf. These oddball objects are often called failed stars, because they have starlike heat and chemical properties but don’t have enough mass for the crush of gravity to ignite nuclear fusion at their cores.

With surface temperatures hovering around 206 degrees F (97 degrees C), the newfound star is the coldest brown dwarf seen to date.

Link

Since a supernova can outshine millions of ordinary stars, it can be easy to spot with a modest telescope — even in a distant galaxy such as UGC 3378, which is about 240 million light-years away. The trick is to check previous images of the same location to see if there are any changes. That’s what Kathryn was doing for the images of the galaxy taken by her father.

Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today has the story: Link (Photo: David Smith/AP)

This is an image taken by the Hubble telescope of a binary star system (named AFGL 3068) in which one star is a a carbon star, a dying red giant, which throws off material in which appears to us to be a spiral pattern. The explanation of this very strange star system is at Bad Astronomy. Link -via Monkeyfilter

In 1986, astronomer Felix J. Lockman discovered a curious region in space where there is little neutral hydrogen gas. This region, called the Lockman Hole, provides a keyhole through which astronomers can observe distant galaxies.

Using the Herschel Space Observatory, scientists at the European Space Agency decided to take a peek through the Lockman Hole and found thousands of galaxies. Each dot you see is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars:

The galaxies seen in this image are all in the distant Universe and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago. They are colour coded in blue, green, and red to represent the three wavebands used for Herschel’s observation. Those appearing in white have equal intensity in all three bands and are the ones forming the most stars. The galaxies shown in red are likely to be the most distant, appearing as they did around 12 billion years ago.

Just think about it.

Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival

If there’s one thing Star Wars fans and non-fans can agree on its’ that the music for each film, composed and conducted by John Williams, is simply outstanding. The familiar tunes have transcended time to become some of the most recognizable and best scores in the history of cinema.

Lucasfilm and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have teamed for Star Wars: A Musical Journey which is set to unveil in April at London’s O2 arena before blasting off on a European tour. The two hour show features clips from all six films, live narration and orchestration.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

Earlier this year Devorah Sperber’s Star Trek art was featured in a show at Caren Golden Fine Art in New York. The show, entitled “Mirror, Mirror”, takes its name from a classic episode but also refers to the way viewers are meant to view the art – via reflective materials. The unique artwork is comprised only of beads and thread.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

But the school officials saw it differently, and declared the his haircut a "gang symbol" and suspended the eight-grader until he got it all shorn off.

Did the school do the right thing? Or are they just being a fuddy duddy? Link [Flash clip]

Alan Taylor of Boston Globe’s The Big Picture Blog, one of the neatest blogs around on the Web, has a truly neat post about the most amazing images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope: Link – Thanks Tiny Dancer!

This one above is the "light echo" of the explosion of V838 Monocerotis, about 20,000 light years from the sun. From Wikipedia:

V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) is a variable star in the constellation Monoceros about 20,000 light years (6 kpc)[1] from the Sun. The star experienced a major outburst in early 2002. Originally believed to be a typical nova eruption, it was then realized to be something completely different. The reason for the outburst is still uncertain, but several theories have been put forward, including an eruption related to stellar death processes and a merger of a binary star or planets.

V838 Monocerotis was also dubbed the "Firefox" star, because of its similarity to the popular browser’s logo (previously on Neatorama)

Photo: CSIRO

A recently discovered species of Marginaster sea star was found living around seamounts in the southern waters off the coast of Tasmania, scientists reported in October 2008.

The seamounts, or underwater mountains, can sprawl 15.6 miles (25 kilometers) wide and rise thousands of feet from the seabed.

In the deep sea, where the ocean bottom is nothing more than muddy sediment, rocky seamounts offer a stable habitat that provides shelter and food for sea life.

National Geographic News has the fascinating photo gallery: Link