Starship Asterisk*

At first, there didn't seem anything earth-shattering about the tiny point of light that pricked the southern Californian sky on a mild night in early April 2007. Only the robotic eyes of the Nearby Supernova Factory, a project designed to spy out distant stellar explosions, spotted it from the Palomar Observatory, high in the hills between Los Angeles and San Diego.
...
But this one did not fade away. It got brighter. And brighter. That's when human eyes became alert.
...
If the interpretation of what popped up that April night is correct, this was a star that should not have existed, in a place where it should never have been. It was a mind-bogglingly massive star that was a throwback to a universe long since gone. It was a star that time forgot.